( 


THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM  IN 
ALEXANDER'S  EMPIRE 


The  Progress  of  Hellenism 
in  Alexander's  Empire 


By 

John  Pentland  Mahaffy,  C.V.O.,  D.D.,  D.C.L. 

Sometime  Professor  of  Ancient  History 
in  the  University  of  Dublin 


CHICAGO:    THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO   PRESS 


LONDON".    T.   FISHER  UNWIN,   PATERNOSTER  SQUARE 
I9O5 


Copyright   1905 
The  University  of  Chicago 


February,    1 905 


mi 


PREFACE 

The  following  Lectures,  delivered  in  the  Univer- 
sity of  Chicago,    represent   the   compendium  of  a 

N  long  and  brilliant  development  of  human  culture. 
To  obtain  a  brief  and  yet  accurate  survey  of  it  is 

J3  certainly  a  desideratum  to  various  classes  of  readers, 
and  will,  I  trust,  satisfy  a  real  want.  The  general 
reader,  who  desires  to  learn  something  of  the  ex- 

_  pansion  of  Greek  ideas  toward  the  East,  will  here 
find  enough  for  a  working  knowledge  of  a  very  com- 

>.  plicated  epoch.  The  specialist,  who  has  devoted 
himself  to  some  department  of  this  field,  will  find 
here  those  general  views  of  the  whole  which  are 
necessary  to  every  intelligent  research  into  the  parts. 

jrf      More  especially,  the  student  or  teacher  of  Christi- 

^J  anity  will  find  here  the  human  side  of  its  origin 
treated  in  a  strictly  historical  spirit.  To  all  such 
this  little  volume  may  be  as  welcome  as  were  the 
lectures  which  compose  it  to  the  large  and  very  sym- 
pathetic class  who  heard  them  in  the  summer  of 
1904. 

Compendiums  have  so  often  been  written  by  mere 
literary  hacks  that  the  public  has  been  misled  to 
believe  it  an  easy  task,  which  can  be  accomplished 
at  second  hand.  But  no  collection  of  extracts  from 
larger  books  ever  made  a  sound   hand-book.     It 


35 


vi  PREFACE 

must  be  produced  fresh  from  the  sources  by  one 
who  has  made  himself  perfectly  at  home  in  the  sub- 
ject. It  is,  in  fact,  rather  the  work  suited  to  the 
close  than  to  the  beginning  of  a  literary  life.  So  far 
at  least  these  lectures  satisfy  the  proper  conditions. 
This  epoch  has  occupied  me  for  more  than  twenty 
years. 

The  appearance  of  Xenophon  in  this  company 
will  seem  novel  to  many;  and  it  is  so  in  truth.  But 
this  new  view  of  a  familiar  figure  is  amply  justified 
by  the  works  which  any  sceptic  may  consult  for 
himself.  This  first  lecture  is,  therefore,  that  which 
will  chiefly  attract  classical  scholars,  to  whom  Xeno- 
phon is  a  household  word  in  the  class-room.  If  it 
encourages  them  to  read  him  through,  instead  of 
confining  themselves  to  his  popular  works,  I  shall 
have  attained  what  I  most  desire.  To  my  American 
readers,  who  have  hitherto  been  very  sympathetic 
friends,  I  offer  my  respectful  greeting  on  the  appear- 
ance of  this  my  first  American  book. 

J.  P.  M. 

Dublin,  January,  1905. 


CONTENTS 


LECTURE   I 


PAGE 


Xenophon  the  Precursor  of  Hellenism   ....        i 

LECTURE   II 
Macedonia  and  Greece 29 

LECTURE   in 
Egypt 63 

LECTURE   IV 
Syria 91 

LECTURE   V 

General  Reflections  on  Hellenism 107 

LECTURE   VI 

Hellenistic  Influences  on  Christianity  .     .    .    .     125 

Index 151 


XENOPHON  THE  PRECURSOR  OF 
HELLENISM 


LECTURE  I 
XENOPHON  THE  PRECURSOR  OF  HELLENISM 

You  have  done  me  a  high  honour  in  asking  me 
to  speak  in  this  great  university.  I  shall  best  express 
my  deep  gratitude  by  economising  your  time  and 
by  setting  to  work  at  once  to  teach  what  I  can  with- 
out further  excuse  or  preamble. 

The  first  thing  essential  is  that  you  and  I  should 
understand  one  another,  especially  regarding  the 
topic  of  my  discourse.  I  am  not  sure  that  all  of  you 
agree  with  me  in  the  meaning  you  attach  to  the 
word  "Hellenism."  And  no  wonder;  for  if  you  read 
the  immortal  Grote,  you  will  find  it  used  by  him  for 
the  high  culture  of  Athens,  and  as  the  substantive 
corresponding  to  the  adjective  "Hellenic."  If,  on 
the  other  hand,  you  open  the  great  work  of  Droysen, 
the  History  oj  Hellenism,  you  will  find  that  it  excludes 
the  purest  Greek  culture,  and  corresponds  to  the 
adjective  "Hellenistic."  As  you  may  see  from 
the  program  of  my  lectures,  I  intend  to  use  the  word 
in  the  latter  sense,  and  to  speak  of  that  diffusion 
of  Greek  speech  and  culture  through  Macedonia 
and  the  nearer  East  which,  while  it  extended  the 
influence,  could  not  but  dilute  the  purity,  of  Hellenic 
civilisation.  I  wish  Grote  had  adopted  from  the 
Germans  the  word  "Hellenedom,"   to  correspond 

3 


4  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

with  "Hellenic."  Then  all  would  have  been  clear. 
Or  perhaps  I  should  have  coined  "Hellenicism," 
to  correspond  to  "Hellenistic."  But  what  chance 
had  I  of  accomplishing  what  the  Roman  emperor 
despaired  of — adding  a  new  word  to  one's  mother- 
tongue  ?  I  must  therefore  be  content  with  repeating 
that  by  "Hellenism"  I  mean  that  so-called  "silver 
age"  of  Greek  art  and  literature,  when  they  became 
cosmopolitan,  and  not  parochial;  and  by  "Hellen- 
istic," not  only  what  was  Greek,  but  what  desired 
and  assumed  to  be  Greek,  from  the  highest  and 
noblest  imitation  down  to' the  poorest  travesty.1 
The  pigeon  English  of  the  Solomon  islander  is  as 
far  removed  from  the  prose  of  Ruskin  or  of  Froude 
as  is  the  rudest  Hellenistic  epitaph  or  letter  from 
the  music  of  Plato's  diction,  but  both  are  clear 
evidence  of  the  imperial  quality  in  that  language 
which  sways  the  life  of  millions  of  men  far  beyond 
the  limits  of  its  original  domain.  Yet  it  must  needs 
be  that  as  the  matchless  idiom  of  Aristophanes 
passed  out  to  Macedonian  noble,  to  Persian  grandee, 
to  Syrian  trader,  to  Egyptian  priest,  each  and  all  of 
these  added  somewhat  of  their  national  flavour,  and 
so  produced  an  idiom  and  a  culture  uniform  indeed 
in  application,  though  by  no  means  uniform  in 
construction. 

1 1  notice  with  surprise  that  Mr.  Bevan,  in  his  recent  mas- 
terly book  on  The  House  of  Seleucus,  uses  the  word  "Hellenism" 
indifferently  in  both  senses,  without  apparent  knowledge  of  the 
ambiguity. 


XENOPHON  THE  PRECURSOR  5 

It  is  customary  to  date  the  origin  of  this  Hellen- 
ism from  the  reign  of  Alexander,  whose  house  had 
adopted  Greek  culture,  and  whose  arms  carried  it 
into  the  far  East ;  but  this  is  to  my  mind  a  superficial 
view,  and  it  is  the  object  of  my  first  lecture  to  show 
you  that  Hellenism  was  a  thing  of  older  growth, 
and  that  it  began  from  the  moment  that  Athens 
ceased  to  be  the  dominant  centre  of  Greece  in  politics 
as  well  as  in  letters. 

The  end  of  the  long  Peloponnesian  war  threw 
out  of  Greece  a  crowd  of  active  and  ambitious  men 
— some  exiled  from  their  homes,  some  voluntary 
absentees — in  search  of  employment.  Neighbouring 
nationalities — Macedonians,  Persians,  Egyptians — 
were  coming  into  nearer  view,  and  becoming  the 
possible  homes  of  expatriated  Greeks.  All  these 
countries  had  long  since  sought  and  found  merce- 
naries, not  only  among  the  poor  mountaineers  of 
Achaea  and  Arcadia,  but  among  the  aristocrats  of 
Lesbos  and  Rhodes,  nay  even  of  Athens  and  Sparta. 
And  now  mercenary  service  rot  only  became  more 
frequent  and  more  respectable,  but  the  relations 
between  the  employers  and  the  employed  began  to 
change.  Earlier  Persian  kings  and  satraps  had 
regarded  their  Greek  mercenaries  as  they  regarded 
their  Indian  elephants — mere  tools  to  win  victories. 
The  relations  of  the  younger  Cyrus  with  the  Greeks 
were  of  a  wholly  different  kind.  He  endeavoured  to 
make  them  friends,  and  to  reconcile  them  to  Persian 


6  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

ideas  of  state  and  of  sovereignty.  How  well  he 
succeeded  I  will  proceed  to  show  in  the  case  of 
Xenophon. 

But  not  only  in  the  case  of  active  men  and  travellers 
but  among  the  stay-at-home  and  purely  literary, 
there  grew  up  in  this  generation  a  feeling  that  culture 
was  more  than  race,  and  wealth  better  than  nobility. 
We  have  Isocrates,  the  rhetorician  and  schoolmaster, 
saying  in  a  passage  of  which  he  probably  did  not 
himself  apprehend  the  deep  meaning,  that  to  be  an 
Athenian  meant,  not  to  be  born  in  Attica,  but  to 
have  attained  to  Attic  culture.  Socrates,  the  most 
undeniable  of  Athenians,  had  already  by  his  teaching 
loosened  the  bonds  of  city  patriotism.  He  had  taught 
wider  views,  and  laid  larger  issues  before  men;  and 
so  we  have  a  typical  pupil,  Xenophon,  using  the 
Delphic  oracle,  not  for  Hellenic,  but  Hellenistic 
purposes,  compelling  its  assent  to  his  schemes  of 
ambition,  and  looking  forward  to  eastern  war  and 
travel  as  the  obvious  resource  for  a  man  without  a 
fixed  position  at  home. 

It  is  an  exceptional  good  fortune  for  the  modern 
historian  that  this  figure  of  Xenophon,  furnished 
with  all  the  books  he  ever  wrote  (and  some  which  he 
never  wrote),  stands  out  so  clearly  at  this  momentous 
epoch,  when  constant  petty  wars  and  rumours  of  wars 
at  home  were  preparing  Greece  for  the  coming 
change.  He  begins  his  life  a  pure  Athenian,  and 
to  the  end  remained  entitled  by  his  style  to  the  name 


XENOPHON  THE  PRECURSOR  7 

of  the  Attic  bee.  But  where  did  that  bee  not  gather 
honey  ?  Not  merely  from  the  thyme  of  Attica  and 
the  cistus  of  the  Peloponnese,  but  from  the  rose 
gardens  of  Persia  and  the  sunflowers  of  Babylonia. 
And  so  in  every  successive  work  there  is  some  new 
flavour  in  the  diction  and  the  tone  of  thought,  till 
we  come  in  the  Cyropcedia  to  that  extraordinary 
panegyric  on  the  methods  of  the  Persian  monarchy, 
even  including  the  employment  of  eunuchs  to  take 
charge  of  the  king's  household. 

But  generalities  or  metaphors  are  not  sufficient 
to  prove  my  case.  Let  us  descend  into  details.  I 
say  that  in  the  main  features  of  his  life  and  teaching 
Xenophon  represents  the  first  step  in  the  transition 
from  Hellenedom  to  Hellenism.  It  is  apparent, 
first,  in  his  language;  for  though  he  writes  excellent 
Attic  Greek,  he  discards  the  niceties  of  style  which 
were  then  invading  Attic  prose,1  and  which  made 
the  essays  of  his  contemporary  Isocrates,  and  the 
orations  of  Demosthenes,  the  most  artificial  of  all 
the  great  prose  writing  the  world  has  seen.  Still 
more  he  allows  himself  the  use  of  stray  and  strange 
words  provincial  in  the  sense  of  not  being  Attic, 
picked  up  in  his  travels  at  Sinope  or  Samos  or 
Byzantium,  and  often  appearing  but  once  in  his 
works.     Thus  his  language  distinctly  approximates 

1  In  particular  the  avoidance  of  hiatus,  e.  g.,  ending  and 
beginning  two  consecutive  words  with  vowels,  so  that  the  voice 
must  stop  between  them  to  make  the  words  clear. 


8  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

to  that  common  dialect  which  was  the  lingua  franca 
of  all  the  Hellenistic  world.  Hence  he  remained 
always  popular,  while  the  writers  in  dialect — Sappho, 
Theocritus,  nay  even  Herodotus — were  well-nigh 
unintelligible  to  the  Hellenistic  child.  There  is, 
moreover,  a  great  diminution  in  his  use  of  particles, 
as  compared,  e.  g.,  with  the  prose  of  Plato.  These 
delicate  spices,  which  gave  flavour  to  every  page  of 
Plato,  very  soon  lost  their  perfume;  they  became  as 
unintelligible  to  the  later  Greeks  as  they  are  to  our 
scholars;  that  is  to  say,  grammarians  could  still  talk 
about  them,  but  no  man  knew  how  to  use  them. 
And  so  the  simpler  prose  of  Xenophon  became  the 
highest  ideal  of  their  aspirations. 

But  if  in  this  respect  his  life  became  simpler  and 
plainer,  in  others  it  followed  a  contrary  course.  In 
his  Socratic  dialogues  he  had  given  a  very  complete 
analysis  of  all  that  could  be  attained  in  Attic  life. 
His  Socrates  is  not  only  a  perfect  man  of  high  intel- 
lectual endowments,  who  discusses  all  the  problems 
of  life,  but  the  pupils  he  has  trained,  men  of  high 
birth  and  independent  fortune,  are  represented  as 
putting  his  theory  into  practice.  Ischomachus,  in 
the  dialogue  or  tract  On  Household  Economy,  not 
only  gives  us  a  famous  picture  of  the  educating 
of  his  own  wife,  after  her  marriage,  but  tells  of  the 
whole  course  of  the  work  and  the  amusements  of  an 
Attic  country  gentleman.  None  of  us  questions 
that  it  was  in  this  Socratic  education  that  Xenophon 


XENOPHON  THE  PRECURSOR  9 

laid  the  foundation  of  his  all-around  capacities  both 
for  intellectual  and  for  practical  life.  He  was  not 
a  deep  philosopher,  and  he  cared  not  to  be;  but,  as 
Tacitus  says  of  Agricola,  another  practical  man, 
retinuit,  quod  est  difficillimum,  in  philosophia  modum. 
He  had  not  the  tastes  or  the  ambitions  of  a  college 
Don.  When  he  had  graduated,  so  to  speak,  under 
Socrates,  he  went  out  into  the  world.  And  there 
he  found  other  nations  which  could  do  some  things 
better  than  the  Greeks,  and  could  attain  great  hap- 
piness denied  to  them. 

There  are  several  blind  spots  in  the  ideal  prospects 
of  Ischomachus — the  Attic  gentleman.  In  the  first 
place,  field  sports  were  impossible  in  Attica.  In  a 
land  so  thickly  populated,  and  so  carefully  cultivated, 
large  properties  were  scarce,  and  preservation 
impossible.  So  game  was  long  since  extirpated 
from  Attica.  But  no  sooner  did  Xenophon  go  to 
visit  the  younger  Cyrus  in  Asia  Minor  than  he  woke 
up  to  the  dignities  and  delights  of  hunting.  This 
taste  he  kept  up  all  his  life.  After  his  return  with 
the  Ten  Thousand,  he  was  attached  to  the  Spartans 
in  their  campaigns  against  the  Persian  satraps,  and 
so  he  had  frequently  the  chance  of  poaching  their 
splendid  preserves.  In  later  life,  when  Sparta 
desired  to  reward  him,  he  obtained  a  sporting  estate 
on  the  Arcadian  side  of  Olympia,  which  he  turns 
aside  to  describe  (in  his  Anabasis  V,  3)  with  evident 
delight.     He  writes  tracts  on  hunting,  and  says  that 


io  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

the  pursuit  of  the  hare  is  so  fascinating  as  to  make  a 
man  forget  that  he  ever  was  in  love  with  anything 
else.  Now,  all  this  side  of  his  life  he  learned  not 
from  Socrates  or  at  Athens,  but  from  his  intercourse 
with  Persian  grandees. 

In  another  place,  when  speaking  of  order  in  the 
keeping  of  a  household,  he  quotes  no  Greek  example, 
but  rather  the  great  Phoenician  merchantman  he  had 
seen  at  Corinth,  where  all  the  tackle  and  the  freight 
were  packed  away  with  such  neatness  and  economy 
as  to  make  it  a  sight  for  the  Greeks  to  visit.  And 
so  he  adds  that  the  planting  of  a  paradise  belonging 
to  his  patron  Cyrus  was  not  only  far  superior  to  any- 
thing in  Greece,  but,  what  was  more  astonishing, 
that  great  prince  had  deigned  to  occupy  his  own 
hands  with  this  planting.  In  the  laying  out,  there- 
fore, of  orchards  and  parks  he  found  that  the  Greeks 
had  everything  to  learn  from  a  race  of  men  whom 
they  had  been  brought  up  to  hate  and  despise.  I 
notice,  by  the  way,  that  in  one  point  both  the  Attic 
and  the  Persian  gardens  were  still  undeveloped. 
In  all  his  descriptions  of  them  Xenophon  is  silent  on 
the  culture  of  flowers.  Nor  does  he  ever  speak  of 
the  beauty  of  his  fruit  trees  in  flower.  When  we 
hear  of  Alexandria,  in  the  next  century,  that  it  pro- 
duced beautiful  flowers  at  every  season  in  its  green- 
houses, we  see  that  the  Hellenism  of  Xenophon  was 
only  incipient.  Queen  Cleopatra  had  been  taught 
many  luxuries  unknown  even  to  the  younger  Cyrus. 


XENOPHON  THE  PRECURSOR  n 

Still  the  very  changes  of  residence  in  Xenophon's 
life  could  not  but  broaden  his  views  and  enlarge 
his  tastes  beyond  those  of  the  cultivated  Athenian. 
Consider  for  a  moment  how  much  of  the  world  he 
had  seen.  Starting  from  Sardis  with  the  army  of 
Cyrus,  and  being  free  from  discipline  as  a  volunteer, 
he  travelled  all  through  southern  Asia  Minor  into 
Babylonia,  where  he  tells  us  of  the  strange  and  new 
aspect  of  the  country,  with  its,  wide  rivers,  its  great 
deserts,  its  dense  cultivation,  and  its  fauna  and 
flora  so  much  more  tropical  than  anything  known 
in  Greece.  Then  comes  the  battle  of  Kunaxa  and 
the  disastrous  death  of  his  great  patron,  Cyrus. 
The  famous  retreat  of  the  Ten  Thousand  is  what  has 
made  Xenophon's  name  immortal,  and  though,  as 
I  gravely  suspect,  he  has  much  exaggerated  his  own 
importance  in  that  arduous  affair,  he  must  certainly 
have  had  the  experience  of  a  journey  over  the  high 
passes  of  Armenia  in  deep  snow  and  arctic  tempera- 
ture, to  contrast  with  the  burning  plains  of  Babylonia. 
He  returns  along  the  north  coast  of  Asia  Minor, 
encountering  many  strange  savage  tribes,  whose  man- 
ners and  customs  he  notes  with  curious  interest.  Then 
from  Byzantium  he  makes  a  tour  among  the  bar- 
barians of  European  Thrace,  and  thence  returns  to 
Greece,  only  to  revert  again  to  Asia  Minor,  and 
this  time  to  campaign  in  its  central  provinces.  He 
next  comes  home  with  his  second  patron,  King 
Agesilaus   of  Sparta,   through   Bceotia,   where   the 


12  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

famous  battle  of  Koronea  gives  him  a  foretaste  of 
Boeotian  supremacy.  Yet  of  all  the  Greeks  none 
were  so  distasteful  to  him  as  these  hardy  vulgarians. 
Not  even  the  great  and  refined  Epaminondas  earns 
from  him  more  than  rare  and  unwilling  praise,  and 
presently  our  travelled  Athenian  departs  in  exile 
to  the  Peloponnese,  where  he  seems  to  have  spent 
the  rest  of  his  long  life. 

Thus  Xenophon  had  studied  not  only  all  Greece, 
but  all  the  borders  of  the  Greek  world  in  Asia 
Minor  and  Thrace;  he  had  penetrated  the  great 
Persian  empire  and  learned  its  splendour  and  its 
weakness.  In  fact,  the  whole  sphere  of  early  Hel- 
lenism was  under  his  ken.  The  West  only — Sicily 
and  southern  Italy — he  neglects,  and  this  is  quite 
characteristic  of  the  rise  of  Hellenism  in  the  next 
generation.  All  the  desires,  the  ambitions,  the 
prospects  of  the  Greeks  of  the  fourth  and  third 
centuries  before  Christ  lay  eastward,  not  westward. 
To  them  the  Romans  were  yet  unknown  and  unnoticed 
barbarians,  and  the  Greek  West  no  land  of  large 
promise  like  the  East;  for  apart  from  the  tough 
mountaineers  of  Calabria  and  Sicily,  dangerous 
neighbours  on  land,  there  was  the  Carthaginian 
sea-power  which  took  care  to  close  the  avenues  of 
trade  to  the  fabulous  isles  and  coasts,  that  loomed 
against  the  setting  sun.  But  in  the  armies  he  com- 
manded there  were  not  wanting  many  mercenaries 
hailing  from  the  far  West ;  there  must  also  have  been 


XENOPHON  THE  PRECURSOR       13 

many  who  had  served  in  Egypt;  and  it  was  from 
these  that  he  derived  his  great  respect  and  admira- 
tion for  that  ancient  civilisation.  The  Egyptians 
who  fight  against  the  great  Cyrus  in  Xenophon's 
romance,  who  are  ultimately  settled  by  him  as  a 
colony  in  Asia  Minor,  are  the  bravest  and  best  of 
oriental  nations.  Such,  then,  being  this  man's  wide 
experience,  it  is  well  worth  seeking  from  his  writings 
his  general  views  regarding  the  Greek  world,  his 
estimate  of  its  strength  and  of  its  weakness,  and  above 
all,  what  he  has  said — or  would  have  said,  had  we 
asked  him — of  the  future  prospects  of  the  complex 
of  states  around  him. 

The  first  and  most  important  point  I  notice  is 
his  firm  belief  in  the  expansion  of  the  Hellenic  race. 
He  has  before  him  constantly  the  feasibility  of  set- 
tling colonies  of  Greeks  anywhere  through  Asia. 
When  the  Ten  Thousand  reach  the  Black  Sea,  and 
the  next  problem  is  how  to  occupy  or  provide  for 
them,  one  of  the  ideas  always  recurring,  and  one 
which  makes  Xenophon  suspected  by  all  those  who 
are  longing  for  their  homes  in  Greece,  is  his  supposed 
ambition  to  be  the  founder  of  a  new  Greek  city  on 
the  Euxine,  where  by  trade,  and  by  intermarriage 
with  the  natives,  his  companions  might  acquire  a  new 
and  a  wealthy  home.  Had  not  Olbia  and  Apollonia 
and  Trapezus  and  many  other  Greek  colonies  of 
earlier  days  fared  splendidly  in  these  remote  but 
most  profitable  regions,  where  sea  and  land,  river 


i4  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

and  plain,  combined  to  produce  their  natural 
wealth  for  the  enterprising  stranger  ?  The  Thracian 
king,  who  calls  in  his  services,  quite  naturally  makes 
similar  offers.  Xenophon  is  to  possess  a  castle, 
marry  a  Thracian  princess,  and  settle  down  as  a 
magnate  who  brings  about  him  Greeks  for  the 
purposes  of  trade  and  of  mercenary  service.  Every 
ambitious  Greek  had  therefore  this  prospect  dang- 
ling before  his  eyes.  And  this  gave  him  a  new,  a 
practical,  interest  in  learning  to  appreciate  the 
qualities  of  the  neighbour  races,  hitherto  set  down 
in  the  lump  as  barbarians.  The  Persian  grandees  on 
their  side  must  have  found  both  pleasure  and  profit 
in  bringing  Greeks  about  their  courts.  If  so  far 
back  as  the  days  of  Sappho  we  hear  that  one  of  the 
girls  she  had  educated  in  charms  went  to  exercise 
them  in  Lydian  Sardis,1  is  it  not  to  be  assumed  that 
also  this  Greek  influence  upon  the  East  was  still 
waxing  ?  The  profession  of  Greek  mercenary  was 
not  confined  to  men-at-arms,  and  among  the  booty 
brought  home  by  the  Ten  Thousand  there  were  so 
many  women  that  their  outcry  was  quite  a  feature  in 
the  camp  in  moments  of  excitement.  It  is  highly 
improbable  that  many  of  these  had  followed  the  army 
from  Hellenic  lands  in  their  upward  march,  and 
if  not,  here  was  an  eastern  element  affecting  the  next 
generation  of  the  profession  of  arms.     The  fusion  of 

1  This  appears  from  the  new  fragment  published  by  Wila- 
mowitz-Moellendorff  in  the  Proceedings  of  the  Berlin  Academy. 
for  1903. 


XENOPHON  THE  PRECURSOR  15 

races,  therefore,  though  slow  and  sporadic,  was 
distinctly  on  its  increase.  The  campaigns  of  the 
Spartan  king  Agesilaus  in  Asia  Minor,  where  he  was 
attended,  and  no  doubt  advised,  by  Xcnophon, 
pointed  to  a  large  invasion  of  the  East;  and  had  he 
not  been  recalled  by  the  miserable  dissensions  and 
quarrels  of  Greece,  the  conquest,  partial  if  not 
total,  of  the  Persian  empire  was  in  near  prospect. 
Isocrates  in  more  than  one  public  letter  implores  the 
leaders  of  his  nationality  to  compose  their  parochial 
disputes,  and  unite  for  the  great  object  of  becoming 
lords  of  the  East. 

The  result  he  regarded  as  certain ;  but  who  was  to 
accomplish  this  great  Hellenic  league  for  the  sub- 
jugation of  the  East  ?  On  this  question  Xenophon's 
opinions  and  his  forecast  are  not  the  less  clear  because 
we  have  to  gather  them  indirectly  from  many  stray 
indications  in  his  works.  He  had  had  large  practical 
experiences,  besides  the  theoretical  opinions  of  his 
master  Socrates,  to  afford  him  materials  for  a  sound 
judgment.  In  the  first  place,  he  had  made  essay  of 
democracy,  both  the  best  and  the  worst  that  Greece 
could  afford.  He  had  lived  an  Athenian  during  the 
latter  half  of  the  great  war  which  deprived  his  city 
of  her  supremacy,  and  he  had  seen  his  great  mas- 
ter gradually  alienating  the  majority  by  his  trench- 
ant criticism,  till  that  master's  life  was  sacrificed  to 
the  vulgar  prejudices  of  a  democratic  jury.  Yet 
Athens  was  the  most  refined  and  cultivated  democracy 


16  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

that  ever  existed.  The  bitter  and  satirical  tract  On 
the  Polity  of  the  Athenians,  still  printed  among  the 
works  of  Xenophon,  is  now  generally  recognised 
as  the  work  of  an  older  writer,  living  at  Athens  when 
Xenophon  was  a  child.  But  it  would  not  have 
attained  its  place,  or  kept  it  so  long,  had  not  the 
readers  of  Xenophon  felt  that  it  expressed  the  opin- 
ions he  was  likely  to  hold.  It  is  certain  that  the 
school  of  Socrates,  even  before  his  shameful  prosecu- 
tion and  condemnation,  were  no  friends  of  democracy. 
They  all  regarded  the  opinion  of  the  majority,  as 
such,  worth  nothing,  and  thought  that  the  masses 
should  be  guided  by  the  enlightened  judgment 
of  the  select  one  or  the  select  few.  What  they  would 
have  said  or  thought,  had  they  made  experience  of 
the  democracies  of  our  day,  is  another  question. 
They  had  before  them  a  sovereign  assembly  which 
by  a  bare  majority  at  a  single  meeting  might  abrogate 
a  law  or  take  away  a  human  life  without  further 
penalty  than  the  contrition  and  the  shame  which  some- 
times followed  upon  calmer  reflection.1  There  were 
no  higher  courts  of  appeal  from  the  sovereign  assem- 
bly, no  rehearing  by  a  second  and  smaller  House; 

1  This  contrition  had  only  one  practical  expression,  which  not 
infrequently  followed  the  reaction.  The  spokesman  who  had 
given  voice  to  the  folly  and  the  passion  of  the  majority  and  had 
framed  or  supported  the  resolution,  was  prosecuted  and  con- 
demned for  having  "deceived  the  sovereign  demos"  by  having 
proposed  things  contrary  to  the  laws  —  truly  a  monstrous  cure 
for  a  monstrous  evil. 


XENOPHON  THE  PRECURSOR  17 

the  Athenian  demos  was  recognised  as  a  tyrant,  above 
the  laws  which  itself  had  sanctioned.  That  such  a 
state  should  carry  out  a  large  policy  of  conquest,  based 
upon  a  confederation  of  friendly  states,  was  clearly 
impossible.  Apart  from  other  difficulties,  the  con- 
duct of  military  affairs  by  a  political  assembly  was 
absurd.  When  a  general  could  be  appointed  or  dis- 
missed by  a  mere  civilian  vote  of  ordinary  citizens, 
was  any  prompt  or  elaborate  campaign  possible  ? 
The  generals  were  all  playing  a  political  as  well  as  a 
strategic  game,  and  looking  to  their  supporters  at 
home  more  than  to  their  troops  abroad  for  support. 
There  are  not  wanting  parallels  for  all  this  in  modern 
times.  Great  foreign  conquests  both  then  and  now 
require  something  very  different  from  the  leading  of 
a  democratic  assembly. 

But  Xenophon  had  other  and  far  worse  experiences 
of  Greek  democracy.  As  a  leader  of  importance, 
selected  by  the  majority  to  command  an  army  of 
Greek  mercenaries,  he  found  himself  in  an  impromptu 
military  republic, .  whose  city  was  its  camp,  and 
whose  laws  the  resolutions  of  armed  men  swayed  by 
the  momentary  gusts  of  passion,  of  panic,  or  of  pride. 
At  the  same  time,  they  were  no  mere  random 
adventurers,  who  regarded  the  camp  as  their  only 
home,  but  men  of  whom  the  majority  had  not  gone 
out  from  poverty,  but  because  they  had  heard  so 
high  a  character  of  Cyrus.  Some  brought  men, 
some  money,  with  them;  some  had  run  away  from 


18  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

home,  or  left  wife  and  children  behind  them,  with 
the  hope  and  intention  of  coming  back  rich  men.1 
Yet  such  men,  though  obedient  enough  to  discipline 
on  the  march  or  in  action,  were  constantly  breaking 
out  into  riots  in  camp;  officers  were  deposed,  inno- 
cent men  hunted  to  death  in  the  fury  of  the  moment.2 
To  live  among  such  people,  still  more  to  be  respon- 
sible for  the  leading  of  them,  was  a  life  of  imminent 
daily  risk.  Such  was  the  wilder  democracy  which 
Xenophon  experienced,  and  here  he  had  not  the 
resource,  which  he  strongly  recommends  to  the  cav- 
alry general  in  his  tract,  that  above  all  things  he 
must  "square"  the  governing  council  of  his  city, 
and  have  on  his  side  a  leading  politician  to  defend 
him.  Xenophon  therefore  saw  very  plainly  what 
hampered  and  weakened  the  Athens  of  Demosthenes 
in  the  next  generation,  and  handed  over  Greece  to 
Philip  of  Macedon — that  a  democracy  which  exposes 
its  executive  government  to  constant  criticism,  and 
which  constantly  discusses  and  changes  its  military 
plans,  is  wholly  unfit  to  make  foreign  conquests  and 
to  rule  an  extended  empire. 

There  was  evidently  far  more  hope  from  the  side 
of  Sparta,  which  at  this  very  moment — I  mean  dur- 
ing Xenophon's  youth  and  his  campaigning  days — 
held  supremacy  in  Greece,  commanded  considerable 
armies,  and  was  under  monarchical  government. 
More  especially  under  an  able  king  like  Agesilaus, 

1  Anabasis  vi,  4.         2  Cf.  Anabasis  vi,  6  ;  v,  7,  §21-24. 


XENOPHON  THE  PRECURSOR  19 

Xenophon  must  have  felt  his  hopes  of  invading  the 
East  within  reach  of  their  fulfilment.  But  a  closer 
survey  of  the  far-famed  Spartan  constitution  showed 
him  that  here,  too,  there  were  flaws  and  faults  which 
made  Sparta  unfit  to  hold  empire.  He  has  left  us  a 
tract  On  the  Lacedtzmonian  Polity,  in  which  he  details 
to  us  with  admiration  the  strict  discipline  of  that 
state  and  especially  the  thorough  organisation  of  its 
education  of  boys  and  men  for  war.  The  order, 
the  respect  for  authority,  the  simplicity  of  life,  the 
subordination  of  even  the  most  sacred  family  rights 
to  the  service  of  the  state — all  these  aristocratic 
features  fascinated  every  cultivated  Greek  who 
lived  under  the  sway  of  that  most  capricious  tyrant, 
a  popular  assembly.  But  they  did  not  appreciate 
the  compensating  advantages  which  democracy, 
however  dangerous  and  turbulent,  afforded  them. 

As  Grote  has  expounded  to  us  with  complacent 
insistence,  no  Spartan  would  have  been  so  fitted  to 
take  a  lead  suddenly  in  public  affairs,  civil  or  mili- 
tary, as  the  cultivated  pupil  of  Socrates  from  Athens, 
who  jumps  in  a  moment  from  an  amateur  into  a 
general.  When  Sparta  obtained  her  empire,  she 
had  no  competent  civil  service  to  manage  her 
dependencies.  Her  harmosts,  as  they  were  called, 
were  but  rude  and  overbearing  soldiers,  not  above 
venality  and  other  corruption,  but  wholly  unable  to 
maintain  the  imperial  dignity  which  is  the  only 
justification  of  a  ruler  from  without,  the  only  coun- 


2o  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

terpoising  boon  for  those  who  find  their  liberties 
impaired.  And  even  if  there  had  been  competent 
rulers  among  the  Spartan  aristocracy,  the  method 
of  appointment  was  radically  vicious.  For  though 
Sparta  was  in  name  a  dual  monarchy,  the  real 
power  lay  with  the  five  ephors — so  far  as  we  know 
them,  narrow  and  bigoted  men — who  were  more 
anxious  to  keep  the  kings  in  subjection  than  to 
appoint  fit  men  as  governors  in  the  subject  cities. 
Xenophon's  experiences  when  the  Ten  Thousand 
returned  to  Byzantium  show  us  how  arbitrary  and 
cruel  was  the  rule  of  these  governors,  how  absurd 
their  mutual  jealousies,  how  incompetent  their 
handling  of  great  public  interests.  Yet  there  was 
no  remedy  while  the  ephors  appointed  their  personal 
friends,  against  whose  crimes  it  was  well  nigh  im- 
possible to  obtain  redress. 

With  all  these  various  experiences  before  him, 
Xenophon  wrote  his  largest  and  most  elaborate 
treatise,  doubtless  that  on  which  he  staked  his 
reputation — the  book  On  the  Education  of  Cyrus. 
The  fate  that  mocks  so  many  human  efforts  has 
not  spared  the  Attic  bee.  This  voluminous  book, 
in  which  the  many  speeches  and  curious  digressions 
seem  to  suggest  the  garrulity  of  advancing  age,  has 
been  neglected  from  the  author's  own  day  till  now, 
while  the  Anabasis  has  been  inflicted  on  every  school- 
boy for  two  millenniums.  The  wonder  is  that  so 
little-heeded  a  treatise  ever  survived  the  neglect  of 


XEXOPHOX  THE  PRECURSOR  21 

ages.  Yet  no  Greek  book  should  have  excited 
greater  likes  and  dislikes  than  this.  Its  theme  is 
the  vindication,  both  theoretically  and  practically, 
of  absolute  monarchy,  as  shown  in  the  organisation 
of  the  Persian  empire.  In  many  other  of  his  writ- 
ings— as,  for  example,  in  the  (Economicus,  he  sets 
forth  the  Socratic  idea  that  if  you  can  find  the  man 
with  a  ruling  soul,  the  archie  man,  you  had  better 
put  him  in  control,  and  trust  to  his  wisdom  rather 
than  to  the  counsels  of  many.  But  now  he  takes  as 
his  ideal  the  far-off  figure  of  the  first  Cyrus,  whose 
gigantic  deeds  impress  alike  the  Hebrew  prophet 
and  the  Greek  philosopher,  and,  amplifying  his 
picture  with  many  romantic  details,  gives  us  in  the 
form  of  a  historical  novel  a  monarch's  handbook 
for  the  gaining  and  the  administration  of  a  great 
empire.  We  never  hear  that  Alexander  the  Great 
read  this  treatise.  Most  probably  his  tutor  Aristotle 
hid  it  from  him  with  jealous  care.  For  what  teaching 
could  be  more  odious  to  the  Hellenic  mind  ?  Never- 
theless, in  all  Greek  literature  there  was  hardly  a 
book  which  would  prove  more  interesting  to  Alex- 
ander, or  more  useful  to  him  in  justifying  his  adop- 
tion of  oriental  ideas. 

What  is  even  more  striking  is  this,  that  after 
Alexander's  magnificent  display  of  what  the  "archie 
man"  could  do  if  he  possessed  an  acknowledged 
monarchy,  the  whole  Hellenistic  world  acquiesced 
in  monarchy  as  the  best  and  most  practical  form  of 


22  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

government.  The  seventh  and  eighth  books  of  the 
CyrofcBdia  were  in  spirit  but  the  earliest  of  the  many 
tracts  composed  by  Stoic  and  Peripatetic  philoso- 
phers about  monarchy  (jrepi  fiaaCketas),  and  it  was 
marvellous  how  even  the  democrats  of  Athens  outbid 
their  neighbours  in  their  servile  adulation  of  such  a 
king  as  Demetrius,  whose  father  had  founded  a 
new  dynasty.  Before  a  century  had  elapsed  since 
Xenophon's  treatise  appeared,  hardly  a  Greek  city 
existed  which  was  not  directly  or  indirectly  under 
the  control  of  a  king.  Even  the  Rhodian  confederacy 
lasted  only  because  the  surrounding  kings  found  their 
finances  more  manageable  in  a  neutral  banking  cen- 
tre with  vast  credit,  and  therefore  with  vast  capital 
secured  in  a  place  of  safety.  And  so  when  a  great 
earthquake  ruined  the  city,  it  was  all  the  kings  of 
the  Hellenistic  world  who  sent  contributions  to  re- 
store it — kings  at  war  or  at  variance  one  with  the 
other,  but  all  bound  to  support  the  financial  credit 
of  Rhodes  and  avert  a  commercial  crash. 

I  will  but  notice  one  more  feature  in  this  monarchy 
which  overspread  the  Hellenistic  world,  which 
Xenophon  saw  in  his  day  and  admired,  though  he 
did  not  fully  comprehend  its  strange  nature.  It  is 
this,  that  hereditary  monarchy  develops  in  its  sub- 
jects a  loyalty  to  the  sovereign  almost  unintelligible 
to  the  modern  republican.  The  notion  that  it  was 
the  highest  honour  not  only  to  die  for  the  king,  but 
to  live  in  his  personal  service,  was  as  foreign  to  the 


XENOPHON  THE  PRECURSOR  23 

old  Hellenic  societies  as  it  is  to  the  modern  American. 
And  yet  among  the  great  and  proud  nobility  of 
Persia,  as  among  that  of  the  French  monarchy,  and 
even  now  in  England,  men  and  women  of  the  greatest 
pride  and  the  largest  wealth  are  "lords-in- waiting," 
"women  of  the  bed  chamber,"  " mistresses  of  the 
robes,"  "chamberlains,"  and  "maids  of  honour." 
Xenophon  saw  this  kind  of  devotion  at  the  very 
outset  of  the  Anabasis  (I,  5).  If  Clearchus,  the 
Lacedaemonian  general,  saw  anyone  slothful  or 
lagging  behind,  he  struck  him  with  his  stick,  but  set 
to  the  work  himself,  in  order  that  he  might  turn 
public  opinion  to  his  side.  How  different  the  posi- 
tion of  Cyrus !  He  sees  a  lot  of  carts  stuck  in  the  deep 
mud  of  a  pass,  and  the  men  set  to  extricate  them 
shirking  the  work.  Whereupon  he  calls  upon  his 
retinue  of  lords  to  show  them  an  example.  These, 
without  a  word,  throwing  off  their  purple  headdress, 
dash  into  the  mud  with  their  costly  tunics,  their 
coloured  trousers,  with  tores  of  gold  around  their 
necks,  and  bracelets  on  their  wrists,  and,  setting  to 
work  with  a  will  drag  out  the  carts  forthwith.  Xeno- 
phon wonders  at  this  instance  of  discipline  (evraljia) 
in  these  young  nobles.  It  was  nothing  of  the  kind. 
It  was  that  loyalty  that  holds  the  personal  service  of 
the  prince  by  divine  right  to  be  the  noblest  self-sac- 
rifice. These  Persians  were  proud  to  do  the  work  of 
asses  and  of  mules  when  called  upon  by  their  prince, 
and  yet  they  were  far  greater  gentlemen  than  the 


24  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

Greeks  who  would  have  been  highly  offended  at  such 
an  order. 

Starting,  then,  with  Macedon  and  Persia,  whose 
kings,  like  the  Spartan  kings,  professed  a  descent 
from  the  gods,  the  whole  Hellenistic  world  learned 
to  regard  a  Ptolemy,  a  Seleucus,  even  an  Attalus, 
as  something  superhuman  in  authority.  This  was 
the  change  which  Xenophon  foresaw  as  highly 
expedient,  if  not  necessary  to  the  management  of  a 
great  empire. 

It  is,  I  think,  well  worth  observing  that  this  prob- 
lem of  monarchy  did  not  occupy  Xenophon  merely 
in  his  old  age.  If  the  Cyropcedia  shows  in  its  style, 
as  I  am  convinced,  something  of  the  prolixity  of  age, 
the  Hiero,  or  dialogue  between  that  tyrant  and 
Simonides,  shows  much  of  the  exuberance  of  youth, 
and  accordingly  it  has  by  general  consent  been 
classed  among  Xenophon's  earliest  works.  In  the 
former  part  of  this  most  interesting  tract  Hiero  sets 
forth  the  dangers  and  miseries  of  the  Greek  tyrant's 
life,  surrounded  as  he  was  by  flattery  concealing 
hatred  and  mistrust,  regarded  as  he  was  by  all  a 
public  enemy,  whose  murder  would  be  regarded  an 
act  of  patriotism.  Hiero  details  the  circumstances 
which  he  regards  essential  to  a  tyrant's  safety,  and 
therefore  certain  to  entail  his  unpopularity  and  its 
consequent  miseries.  A  tyrant  must  keep  up  a 
mercenary  force;  he  must  therefore  levy  taxes  for  its 
support;  he  cannot  possibly  travel  or  see  the  world, 


XENOPHON  THE  PRECURSOR  25 

for  fear  of  a  revolution  in  his  absence,  and  so  on, 
through  the  catalogue  of  difficulties,  which  were  a 
commonplace  of  Greek  literature.  But  when  all  is 
said  on  that  side,  Simonides  reposts  that  it  is  not  by 
reason  of  their  external  circumstances,  but  of  their 
own  characters,  that  Greek  tyrants  have  earned  the 
mistrust  and  hatred  of  men.  He  goes  on  to  show 
how  even  a  monarch  not  hereditary,  who  has  risen 
from  a  private  station,  could  earn  the  esteem  and 
gratitude  of  his  subjects,  and,  by  identifying  his  own 
interests  with  those  of  his  city,  make  himself  the 
acknowledged  benefactor  of  all  around  him.  Even 
the  keeping  of  a  mercenary  force  is  justified  by  good 
practical  reasons,  as  the  protection  of  frontiers  was 
always  a  great  burden  to  a  citizen  population,  and 
as  the  readiness  and  discipline  of  professional  soldiers 
must  be  superior  to  a  sudden  levy  of  amateurs  in 
war,  if  such  unwilling  recruits  can  indeed  be  called 
amateurs.  With  such  arguments  Xenophon  justifies 
the  fact  that  most  ambitious  Greeks  regarded  the 
attaining  to  a  tyranny  as  the  very  acme  of  their  desires. 
However,  if  this  fact  was  known  to  the  Ten  Thous- 
and, it  justifies  not  a  little  of  their  suspicions  that 
Xenophon  dreamt  of  being  not  only  the  founder  but 
the  autocrat  of  a  new  city  on  the  Euxine.  The 
picture  of  the  benevolent  tyrant,  shown  in  the  Hiero, 
would  hardly  be  a  sufficient  guarantee  to  them  that 
Xenophon,  as  a  monarch,  would  indeed  depart  so 
widely  from  the  ordinary  and  hateful  traditions  of  a 


26  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

Greek  tyranny.  We  need  only  here  insist  that  the 
idea  of  monarchy  had  already  occupied  the  early 
attention  of  the  author  of  the  Cyropadia,  and  that 
he  had  probably  found  the  arguments  in  its  favour 
an  ordinary  topic  among  the  young  aristocrats  in  the 
school  of  Socrates. 

I  confess  that  the  extremes  to  which  he  carries 
his  defence  of  the  imperii  instrumenta  employed  by 
the  kings  of  Persia  must  be  distasteful  to  any  rea- 
sonable critic,  most  of  all  to  any  democrat,  ancient 
or  modern.  The  way  in  which  he  describes  the 
great  king  absorbing  all  the  interests  and  ambitions 
of  his  subjects,  and  making  every  man  in  the  state 
look  to  the  sovran  as  the  fountain  of  honour  and 
of  promotion — all  this  savours  of  a  Napoleonic  cen- 
tralisation and  a  Napoleonic  tyranny,  which,  as  it 
saps  all  individual  independence,  so  it  kills  the 
growth  and  nurture  of  the  highest  qualities  in  human 
nature.  This  unpleasant  side  of  the  book  may  afford 
one  reason  for  its  systematic  neglect.  It  is  so  far 
like  one  of  those  artificial  school-exercises,  so  com- 
mon in  the  next  generation,  where  the  speaker  made 
it  his  glory  to  vindicate  some  villain  or  justify  some 
crime.  And  perhaps  Xenophon  was  infected  with 
this  "sophistic"  more  than  his  readers  imagine. 
Nevertheless,  I  for  one  have  no  doubt  that  real  con- 
victions in  favour  of  monarchy  underlie  all  his  semi- 
sophistical  arguments. 

Grote,  the  great  historian  of  Greece,  who  was  the 


XENOPHON  THE  PRECURSOR      27 

first  to  inspire  me,  and  perhaps  many  of  you,  with 
the  love  of  Greek  history  and  Greek  literature,  looks 
upon  this  momentous  change  as  the  death-knell  of 
his  favourite  country.  "  'Tis  Greece,  but  living 
Greece  no  more."  And  yet  at  no  time  did  the  Greeks 
do  more  for  the  letters,  the  commerce,  the  civility  of 
all  the  ancient  world.  And  hence  it  is  that  I  have 
chosen  this  somewhat  neglected  period  as  the  topic 
of  my  discourses. 


MACEDONIA  AND  GREECE 


THE  ANTIGONID  DYNASTY 

[We  need  not  consider  the  stormy  and  broken  rule  of  Deme- 
trius I  (the  Besieger) .] 

i.  Antigonus  Gonatas  (born  at  Gonce  in  Tbessaly)  278-  39 

2.  Demetrius  the  ^Etolian 239-  29 

3.  Antigonus  Doson 229-  21 

4.  Philip  V 221-178 

5.  Perseus 178-  68 


LECTURE  II 
MACEDONIA  AND  GREECE 

In  my  last  address  I  showed  you  how  Xenophon 
— a  thorough  and  cultivated  Hellene,  and  yet  a 
travelled  man,  and  acquainted  with  the  East — fore- 
shadowed the  spread  of  Hellenic  influence  and  cul- 
ture beyond  its  early  and  restricted  home.  He  is 
not,  like  Isocrates,  a  political  theorist,  nor  does  he 
formally,  in  any  of  his  works,  hold  out  the  conquest 
of  the  East  by  the  Greeks  as  the  great  national 
object  of  the  future.  He  probably  thought  the 
practical  difficulties  to  be  insurmountable,  for  till 
an  absolute  ruler  should  arise  able  to  coerce  Greece 
into  unity,  at  least  for  military  purposes,  all  theories 
and  exhortations  were  useless.  But  Isocrates,  living 
a  few  years  longer,  saw  clearly  enough  that  such  a 
solution  was  within  sight,  and  in  his  open  letter  to 
Philip  of  Macedon  exhorts  him  to  lead  the  Greeks 
away  from  internal  disputes  and  wars  into  the  new 
role  of  a  conquering  race.  But  no  Philip,  nay  even 
no  Alexander,  could  have  done  this  work  with  Greek 
armies,  either  citizen  or  mercenary.  He  must  have 
the  backbone  of  quite  another  force — bound  to 
him  not  only  by  discipline,  but  by  loyalty,  and  ready 
to  protect  him  against  Greek  intrigue  and  Greek 
insurrection.     All    these    conditions    were    satisfied 

31 


32  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

by  Macedonia,  with  Philip  as  its  monarch.  But  it 
required  nearly  twenty  years  of  organisation,  of 
civilisation,  and  of  subjugation  to  prepare  the  com- 
bined forces  of  Greece,  Macedon,  Illyria,  and 
Thrace  for  its  great  work;  and  when  all  was  ready 
Philip  was  struck  down  by  the  hand  of  an  assassin. 
Providentially,  a  great  successor  was  ready  to  carry 
out  the  matured  plan.  But  had  Alexander  been 
killed  in  his  first  melee  at  the  Granikos,  when  the 
Persian  nobles  fought  so  gallantly  with  him  hand 
to  hand,  the  whole  history  of  Hellenism  would  have 
been  changed,  and  its  progress  delayed  till  some 
other  organising  and  conquering  genius  had  arisen. 
It  was  therefore  to  the  king  of  Macedon,  leading  his 
own  people,  that  the  first  great  spread  of  Hellenism 
is  directly  due.1 

Macedonia  had  long  been  known  to  the  Greeks, 
especially  through  the  cities  they  had  founded  on  the 
coast,  which  carried  on  some  trade  with  the  semi- 
civilised  interior;  but,  except  for  the  court,  neither 
Greek  language  nor  Greek  culture  had  penetrated 
into  the  wild  country.  The  kings  had,  indeed,  long 
since  made  out  for  themselves  a  Greek  pedigree, 

1  At  no  moment,  by  the  way,  does  the  now  somewhat  fash- 
ionable theory,  that  national  movements  are  everything,  and 
individuals  nothing,  in  history,  appear  to  me  more  absurd.  To 
tell  me  that  the  conquest  of  the  East  was  in  the  air,  and  that 
some  other  Alexander  would  have  carried  out  the  national  desire, 
had  the  son  of  Philip  been  killed  at  the  outset  of  his  career,  is 
to  tell  me  what  no  man  could  possibly  prove,  and  what  runs 
counter  to  all  the  experience  we  possess. 


MACEDONIA  AND  GREECE 


33 


and  had  courted  Greek  literary  men.  If  Simonides 
had  basked  in  the  courts  of  Thessaly,  Euripides  had 
produced  plays  for  the  Macedonian,  though  it  is 
very  likely  that  the  Macedonian  nobles  who  came  to 
hear  the  Bacchcs  at  court  understood  it  no  better 
than  did  the  Parthian  lords  who  saw  the  head  of 
Crassus  brought  in  to  play  its  ghastly  part  in  the  same 
immortal  drama.  But  how  little  hold  Greek  ever 
took  upon  the  people  is  manifest  from  the  fact 
that  we  know  not  of  a  single  Macedonian  author, 
unless  we  count  the  royal  Ptolemies,  some  of  whom 
dabbled  in  literature. 

The  materials  which  the  genius  of  Alexander 
found  to  his  hand  were  quite  distinct — the  military 
qualities  of  the  Macedonians  and  the  culture  of  the 
Greeks;  and  both  were  absolutely  necessary  for  his 
purpose.  Moreover,  both  remained  clear  and  dis- 
tinct elements  in  every  kingdom  which  was  formed 
out  of  his  vast  empire.  If  it  were  only  for  this  reason, 
it  is  desirable  to  lay  firm  hold  of  the  general  features 
of  both  these  nations  before  we  consider  the  Egypt 
and  the  Syria  which  they  transformed,  or  failed  to 
transform,  from  oriental  into  Hellenistic  states. 
Remember  I  must  take  broad  views  in  this  sketch, 
and  must  speak  of  Greece  as  one  conglomerate, 
though  as  you  all  know,  it  was  made  up  of  little 
separate  cities,  each  with  its  own  small  territory  and 
its  independence,  like  the  little  states  which  crowded 
the  map  of  Germany  when  we  were  young,  and  still 


34  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

more  like  the  little  city- republics  which  crowded  the 
map  of  Italy  in  mediaeval  times.  And  so  I  must  talk 
of  Macedonia  as  one  thing,  though  it  never  was  a 
stricter  unity  in  its  older  history  than  the  unity 
of  Germany  now  is,  and  though  it  doubtless  con- 
tained with  its  Agrianes,  Paeonians,  Epirots,  etc.,  a 
greater  variance  than  there  is  between  Bavarians 
and  Saxons  in  the  German  empire.  But,  as  I  may 
presume  that  you  know  all  this  about  Greece,  I 
will  confine  myself  chiefly  to  Macedonia. 

When  Macedonia  emerged  from  its  obscurity 
owing  to  the  genius  of  the  famous  Philip,1  it  had 
long  been  known  and  despised  by  the  Greeks,3  as 
the  home  of  people  who  did  not  inhabit  cities.  If 
you  go  now  and  visit  Macedonia,  you  will  see  at  once 
the  force  of  this  contrast.  The  Greek  loved  the 
sea-side,  the  neighbourhood  of  many  men,  the  lounge 
and  the  talk  in  the  market-place.  His  amusements 
were  processions,  feasts,  ceremonies,  athletics,  plays. 
He  was  essentially  no  sportsman,  and  he  was  only  a 
soldier  from  the  compulsion  of  defending  his  home, 
or  of  making  money  abroad.  There  is  little  of  what 
we  call  chivalry  among  the  Greeks,  if  we  except 
the  earlier,  or  rather  the  ideal,  Spartans. 

1  He  was  really  Philip  II. 

a  Demosthenes  says  with  very  ill-advised  contempt  that  no 
decent  slave  could  be  procured  from  that  country.  He  thought 
this  a  scathing  remark  ;  we  might  interpret  it  as  a  compliment. 
The  retort  is  obvious  that  very  fine  masters  came  from  it,  as  the 
Greeks  learned  to  their  cost. 


MACEDONIA  AND  GREECE  35 

Now,  in  contrast,  the  Macedonians  were  rude 
and  hardy,  mountaineers  in  the  strict  sense  of  the 
word,  living  among  forests  and  glens,  loving  to 
pursue  the  bear  and  the  wolf  through  pathless 
wilds,  or  to  spear  the  boar  in  hand-to-hand  conflict. 
And,  as  you  might  expect  in  such  a  country,  there 
were  feudal  lords,  who  held  a  sort  of  hereditary 
sovereignty  over  certain  districts,  and  who  had  the 
traditions  and  the  dignity  of  royal  pretensions, 
though  these  were  all  swallowed  up  in  the  splendour 
of  their  suzerain,  the  king  of  Macedonia. 

Yet  the  fact  is  not  without  its  importance.  These 
nobles — Antigonus,  Ptolemy,  Seleucus,  Craterus — 
took  service  under  Alexander  just_as  the  German 
hereditary  princes  now  serve  under  the  Prussian 
headship.  In  both  cases  we  find  that  this  kind  of 
officer  gives  a  peculiar  character  to  the  army,  and  that 
such  leaders  are  obeyed  far  better,  and  are  more 
efficient,  than  men  promoted  from  the  ranks.  Sec- 
ondly, when  Alexander  died,  and  these  men  set  up 
as  independent  sovereigns,  they  did  so  with  the 
habits  of  ruling,  and  with  the  dignity  only  attained 
by  generations  of  nobility. 

Thus  there  is  a  marked  contrast  between  Alex- 
ander and  his  generals  with  what  appears  at  first 
sight  a  close  parallel.  Napoleon  was  an  upstart,  and 
his  generals  were  upstarts  who  failed  as  kings. 
Alexander  was  a  hereditary  king,  and  his  generals 
hereditary   princes   and   nobles,   who   consequently 


36  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

succeeded  in  founding  new  royal  houses.  The 
ablest  of  the  staff,  Eumenes,  of  Kardia,  who  was 
Alexander's  intimate  secretary,  failed  in  establish- 
ing a  kingdom  for  himself,  not  for  want  of  bravery, 
not  for  want  of  ability  as  a  general,  but  because  the 
Macedonians  would  not  be  led  by  an  upstart  Greek — 
so  completely  had  the  tables  turned  upon  the  intellec- 
tual leaders  of  the  world.  This  peculiar  character 
of  the  Macedonian  aristocracy  is,  I  think,  of  the 
last  importance  in  understanding  the  career  of  the 
Macedonians  as  a  conquering  race. 

I  shall  not  go  into  the  politics  of  Philip,  which 
you  can  all  study  in  any  ordinary  Greek  history, 
but  will  say  a  word  about  his  military  idea,  the 
famous  phalanx.  The  intention  of  it  is  evident. 
He  wished  to  make  an  inferior  infantry — that  is, 
one  of  less  training  and  of  inferior  arms — equal  to 
the  full-armed  Greeks  by  massing  it  into  a  column, 
a  moving  square,  in  which  five  rows  of  lance-points 
formed  an  impenetrable  barrier  to  assailants,  and 
which,  if  it  advanced,  must  walk  through  any  oppo- 
sition made  in  loose  order.  This  object  was  really 
effected,  and  so  thoroughly  that  even  the  Roman 
infantry  could  not  resist  its  advance,  and  Paullus 
iEmilius,  the  conqueror  of  Macedonia  at  the  battle 
of  Pydna,  told  his  friend  Polybius  he  had  never  seen 
anything  so  terrible.  But,  of  course,  the  advancing 
of  the  vast  and  solid  column  was  attended  with 
great  difficulties.     Any  interruption  in  the  ground 


MACEDONIA  AND  GREECE  37 

made  an  obstacle  not  to  be  overcome  without  break- 
ing the  formation,  and  so  an  advance  on  broken 
ground  was  fatal  to  the  phalanx.  It  seems  also  to 
have  been  so  constructed  that  facing  about  to  meet 
an  attack  from  the  flank  or  rear  was  never  practi- 
cally possible.  Let  me  also  remind  you  that  the 
modern  square  with  which  we  fight  large  bodies  of 
savages  has  that  terrible  offensive  weapon,  the  rifle, 
while  the  Macedonian  phalanx  could  not  use  even 
the  slings  and  darts  of  ancient  warfare. 

The  fact  therefore  remains  that  in  its  early  days 
the  phalanx  was  not  of  much  real  importance. 
Philip  may  have  won  one  great  battle  with  it;  Alex- 
ander never  did;  it  was  only  in  the  great  wars  of  his 
successors,  when  both  sides  used  the  phalanx,  that 
the  direct  shock  of  the  opposing  infantry  was  decided 
by  the  steadier  troops  holding  together,  while  the 
weaker  melted  away  before  the  actual  conflict,  as 
is  now  usually  the  case  if  two  hostile  lines  charge 
with  the  bayonet. 

I  revert  now  to  the  statement,  which  may  have 
surprised  some  of  you,  that  Alexander  never  won  a 
battle  with  the  Macedonian  phalanx.  This  is  quite 
certain.  While  a  mere  boy,  he  had  decided  his 
father's  great  battle  of  Chaeronea  against  the  Thebans 
and  Athenians  by  a  charge  of  cavalry ;  and  all  through 
his  life  he  pursued  the  same  tactics.  He  (like  Crom- 
well) won  his  battles  by  charges  of  cavalry,  using  the 
phalanx  merely  as  his  defensive  arm,  which  occupied 


38  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

and  threatened  the  enemy  while  the  decisive  work  was 
done  on  his  right  wing.  It  appears  to  me  that  he 
even  regarded  the  phalanx  as  a  clumsy  and  unman- 
ageable arm,  for  at  the  moment  of  his  death  he  was 
breaking  it  up  into  smaller  and  lighter  formations. 
That  wonderful  general,  whose  great  secret  lay  in 
the  promptness  and  decision  of  his  operations, 
naturally  chose  the  handiest  order  for  rapid  advance, 
and  the  most  intelligent  co-operation,  and  as  he 
found  the  phalanx  unsuitable,  so  he  despised  the 
use  of  both  elephants  and  scythed  chariots,  which 
his  oriental  enemies  employed,  as  weapons  not 
trustworthy  and  likely  to  confuse  a  sound  and 
rational  plan  of  battle.  On  the  other  hand,  he  per- 
fected his  heavy  cavalry  and  his  footguards  in  every 
practical  way.  The  footguards  were  very  lightly 
armed,  and  intended  to  support  the  cavalry  as 
promptly  as  possible.  The  cavalry  was  made  the 
special  service  for  his  friends  and  his  nobles,  essen- 
tially the  household  cavalry,  and  specially  trained 
to  riding  and  to  the  use  of  the  spear.  For  as  the 
use  of  stirrups  was  still  unknown,  fighting  on  horse- 
back was  a  very  different  thing  from  what  it  is  nowa- 
days, and  the  use  of  the  sword  must  have  been 
comparatively  small,  when  rising  in  the  saddle,  nay 
the  saddle  itself,  was  unknown. 

The  other  point  in  which  Alexander  made  im- 
provements in  the  art  of  war,  which  have  not 
been  appreciated,  was  that  of  artillery.     Philip  had 


MACEDONIA  AND  GREECE  39 

already  used  all  the  newer  mechanical  discoveries 
for  siege  trains  and  battering  purposes,  but  Alexan- 
der applied  them  to  field  artillery,  which  he  brought 
to  such  perfection  that  his  army  could  carry  with  it 
engines  which  threw  stones  and  darts  three  hundred 
yards.  Imagine  what  an  advantage  this  gave  him. 
He  frequently  cleared  a  narrow  pass  or  the  opposite 
side  of  a  river  of  the  enemy  by  the  mere  fire  of  his 
catapults,  and  then  crossed  at  leisure. 

I  think  it  worth  giving  you  these  details,  because 
it  is  a  vague  thing,  though  a  perfectly  true  thing,  to 
say  that  it  was  by  his  genius  that  Alexander  con- 
quered the  eastern  world.  Genius  always  works 
with  the  means  at  its  disposal,  or  rather  disposes  of 
the  ordinary  means  in  such  a  way  as  to  produce 
exceptional  results.  Thus  Alexander  found  ready 
the  phalanx,  the  siege  trains,  and  the  military  aris- 
tocracy which  his  father  had  employed  in  an  active 
and  successful  reign.  He  enlarged  their  use,  or 
modified  them  to  suit  greater  and  nobler  plans. 

His  army,  as  you  know,  was  a  small  one.  To 
carry  a  vast  number  of  men  into  Asia  in  a  rapid 
campaign,  through  hostile  country,  would  be  im- 
possible; so  that  he  probably  never  had  an  effective 
force  of  more  than  thirty  thousand  under  his  com- 
mand. I  except  of  course  sieges,  like  that  of  Tyre, 
when  he  formed  a  settled  camp  and  delayed  for 
months,  and  his  progress  in  ships  down  the  Indus. 
But  even  with  thirty  thousand  men  you  will  wonder 


4o  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

how  he  could  undertake  to  attack  a  new  and  strange 
country,  and  penetrate  far  beyond  the  knowledge 
of  any  Macedonians  and  Greeks,  among  nations  of 
strange  languages  and  customs,  unless  he  were  a 
wandering  knight-errant  in  search  of  romantic  ad- 
ventures. This,  indeed,  is  the  very  view  of  him 
taken  by  the  romances  on  his  life  composed  at 
Alexandria,  which  are  not  unlike  the  Arabian  Nights 
composed  at  Cairo,  the  mediaeval  successor  to  Alex- 
andria, in  their  imagination.  But  the  real  Alexander 
was  no  such  person,  and  the  key  to  his  action  is  given 
in  a  curious  passage  of  Josephus.1  I  need  hardly  tell 
you  that  when  his  great  expedition  was  successful, 
he  rapidly  established  Greek  as  the  lingua  franca  of 
the  whole  empire,  and  this  it  was  which  gave  the 
chief  bond  of  union  to  the  many  countries  of  old 
civilisation,  which  had  hitherto  been  isolated. 

This  unity  of  culture  is  the  remarkable  thing  in 
the  history  of  the  world.  Before  Alexander,  Persia, 
India,  Egypt,  and  Italy  were  all  separately  following 
out  their  own  ideas.  After  Alexander,  all  conform 
to  a  common  standard,  and  desire  to  be  regarded 
as  members  of  a  common  civilisation.     St.  Paul  re- 

1  The  reference  is  Josephus,  Antiquities,  xi,  8,  §§4,  5.  In 
the  embellished  story  note  that  Alexander  says  the  high-priest 
whom  he  saw  in  his  dream  promised  that  he  would  conduct  the 
king's  army;  and  after  the  Jews  had  obtained  local  liberties  and 
a  remission  of  taxes  in  the  sabbatical  year,  the  king  invites  them 
to  serve  with  him,  on  condition  of  living  as  Jews,  and  "many 
were  ready  to  accompany  him  in  his  wars." 


MACEDONIA  AND  GREECE  41 

quired  no  gift  of  tongues  to  preach  to  the  civilised 
world.  He  wrote  in  Greek  to  Jews,  Galatians,  Mace- 
donians, and  Romans;  and  far  beyond  their  limits 
Greek  would  carry  the  traveller  from  Gades  to  Ceylon. 
This  was  the  direct  result  of  Alexander's  conquests. 
It  will  be  our  duty  in  the  next  two  lectures  to  follow 
out  the  effects  of  this  Hellenizing  of  the  world  in  its 
two  most  striking  examples — the  kingdoms  of  Alex- 
andria and  of  Antioch,  which  better  describe  them 
than  Egypt  and  Syria. 

But  what  was  the  result  upon  Macedonia  and 
Greece,  the  original  nucleus  of  all  this  vast  domin- 
ion ?  It  is  remarkable  that  neither  ever  lost  its 
importance  in  the  great  new  complex  of  nations. 
However  splendid  and  important  Babylon  or  Alex- 
andria might  be,  Macedonia  was  the  true  home  of 
the  kings,  it  gave  its  title  to  the  military  nobility  of 
Syria  and  Egypt,  and  none  of  the  early  Successors 
thought  he  had  succeeded  to  the  empire,  if  he  had 
not  recovered  the  ancient  seat  of  the  monarchy  and 
laid  his  bones  in  the  royal  sepulchre  at  y£gae.  The 
Regent  for  the  heirs  of  Alexander  was  naturally  sup- 
posed to  live  there;  the  great  majority  of  Alexan- 
der's house,  his  mother,  his  wife  and  child,  resided 
there.  There,  too,  they  were  all  successively  mur- 
dered, to  make  way  for  the  house  of  Antipater,  whom 
the  great  king  himself  had  intrusted  with  Macedonia, 
and  whose  son  Casander  established  himself  over  the 
murdered  remains  of  all  his  master's  house.     After 


42  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

Casander's  death  his  contemptible  sons  either  died 
or  were  murdered  to  make  way  for  Demetrius  the 
Besieger,  of  whom  Plutarch  has  left  so  interesting  a 
life,  the  son  of  Antigonus,  who  was  the  fellow- 
commander  and  rival  of  Antipater.  This  Demetrius 
was  married  to  Casander's  sister,  so  that  their  son 
Antigonus  Gonatas,  who  may  be  regarded  as  the  real 
founder  of  the  new  and  famous  line  of  Macedonian 
kings  which  ended  with  the  Roman  conquest,  was 
the  offspring  of  two  of  Alexander's  most  eminent 
generals — both  of  them  great  Macedonian  nobles, 
with  hereditary  rights,  and  thus  commanding  the 
respect  of  the  warlike  mountaineers  not  only  by  their 
prowess,  but  by  their  social  position.  This  is  the 
real  secret  of  the  attachment  and  devotion  of  the 
Macedonians  to  their  kings.  I  will  consider  as  briefly 
as  possible  the  general  characteristics  of  this  famous 
line,  and  point  out  to  you  their  real  importance  in 
modifying  the  world's  history. 

The  first  king,  Antigonus  of  Macedon,  grandson 
of  Alexander's  general  of  the  same  name,  had  a 
long  and  checkered  struggle  for  his  kingdom.  He 
was  at  first  foiled  by  the  famous  Pyrrhus,  his  superior 
in  arms;  by  old  Lysimachus,  another  companion  of 
Alexander;  lastly  by  the  terrible  fury  of  the  Celts 
or  Galatians,  whose  invasion  swept  all  Macedonia, 
got  rid  of  his  rivals  for  him,  and  allowed  him  to  begin 
again  the  task  of  making  for  himself  a  kingdom. 

This  invasion  of  the  Celts  is  one  of  the  turning- 


MACEDONIA  AND  GREECE  43 

points  in  Greek  history.  It  took  place  in  278  B.  C, 
when  the  original  companions  of  Alexander  were  all 
gone  from  the  scene  through  age  if  not  through  vio- 
lence, and  when  the  world  was  longing  for  rest  after 
forty  years  of  confusion.  All  the  knight-errants  of 
the  world  were  now  passing  away,  and  six  years  more 
saw  the  end  of  Pyrrhus,  who  was  in  Italy  when  this 
great  barbarian  invasion  took  place.  Macedonia 
and  Greece  were  weary  of  wars  and  rumours  of  wars, 
and  were  glad  to  acquiesce  in  the  claims  of  the 
prudent,  philosophical,  high-principled  Antigonus. 
From  this  time  to  the  year  168  B.  C.,  when  the  battle 
of  Pydna  and  the  capture  of  King  Perseus  made  an 
end  of  the  kingdom  of  Macedonia,  the  Antigonids, 
as  they  were  called,  were  the  ruling  house,  and  suc- 
ceeded one  another  on  strictly  hereditary  principles. 
In  round  numbers,  the  first  king  reigned  forty  years; 
his  son,  ten;  his  cousin,  Antigonus  Doson,  nearly  ten 
as  guardian  to  the  infant  heir;  then  this  new  Philip, 
the  opponent  of  the  Romans,  for  over  forty  years; 
and  his  son  Perseus,  for  about  ten;  that  is  to  say, 
two  long  reigns  of  about  forty  years,  and  three  short 
ones  of  about  ten,  made  up  the  whole  period  of  the 
Antigonids  during  which  they  remained  great  figures 
in  the  Hellenistic  world.  Of  course,  I  cannot  go 
into  the  details  of  these  reigns,  but  there  are  certain 
general  features  which  you  can  easily  carry  away, 
and  which  will  give  you  an  interest  in  learning  more 
about  them. 


44  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

In  the  first  place,  it  was  not  only  the  first  An- 
tigonus  (Gonatas)  who  was  obliged  to  conquer  his 
kingdom.  His  son,  Demetrius  II,  had  to  do  so; 
and  again  his  nephew,  Antigonus  Doson,  so  cele- 
brated for  his  victory  at  Sellasia,  and  his  conquest 
of  Sparta  with  the  help  of  the  Achaean  League.  It 
was  not  till  Philip  V  that  these  kings  succeeded 
peaceably,  and  with  a  general  consent  on  the  part 
of  Greece  and  their  northern  dependents.  And 
strange  to  say,  it  was  not  until  the  last  two  kings, 
who  succeeded  peaceably,  that  we  perceive  a  degra- 
dation in  their  character.  The  first  three,  who  came 
to  a  stormy  heritage,  like  Philip  and  Alexander 
before  them,  and  fought  their  way  to  recognition, 
were  all  strong,  able,  and  righteous  men ;  the  last  two, 
Philip  and  Perseus,  who  had  their  kingdom  ready 
for  them,  were  very  inferior — the  former  cruel,  sen- 
sual, and  treacherous;  the  latter  mean  and  stingy  to 
an  extent  which  caused  his  ruin. 

But  what,  you  will  ask,  were  the  conflicts  which 
the  three  kings  had  to  fight  for  their  kingdom  ?  For 
the  Macedonians  were  loyal  to  the  house,  and  were 
wont  to  be  governed  by  kings.  Well,  Macedonia 
proper  was  so ;  the  nation  owed  the  first  Antigonus 
a  great  debt  for  his  struggles  against  the  Gauls, 
and  there  is  no  doubt  that  it  accepted  him  as 
the  lawful  sovran.  But  the  kingdom  included  far 
more  than  that.  It  included  a  number  of  semi- 
barbarous  tribes  reaching  into  the  modern  Dalmatia 


MACEDONIA  AND  GREECE  45 

and  Montenegro,  as  well  as  into  Bulgaria,  in  an  ill- 
defined  way;  and  these  tribes  were  easily  excited  to 
follow  some  pretender,  as  soon  as  the  death  of  the 
king  left  the  throne  vacant  and  the  control  was  for 
a  moment  relaxed.  Moreover,  there  was  a  constant 
tendency  in  the  northern  barbarians  about  the 
Danube  to  invade  the  Hellenic  peninsula,  and  it  was 
the  greatest  service  done  by  Macedonia  to  the  world, 
after  Alexander,  that  it  formed  a  strong  barrier 
against  these  invasions,  and  protected  the  culture  and 
refinement  of  Greece  from  perishing  at  the  hand  of 
savages. 

There  are  periods  in  the  world's  history  when  a 
single  man  has  done  this  service.  The  great  Cyrus 
spent  most  of  his  life,  and  died  at  last,  in  defending 
his  northern  frontier  against  the  Turanian  hordes 
which  would  have  inundated  civilised  Asia  centuries 
sooner  but  for  the  strong  barrier  made  by  the  Persian 
king  and  his  organisation.  The  same  kind  of  service 
was  done  by  the  Antigonids.  There  were  Illyrians 
and  Dardanians,  and  many  other  less-known  tribes, 
which  at  this  time  seem  to  have  increased  in  numbers 
and  in  restlessness,  and  were  ready  to  migrate  in 
thousands,  like  the  Celts,  and  seek  new  homes  in 
the  warmer  and  more  fruitful  south.  But  they  were 
barbarians,  pure  and  simple,  who  would  not  have 
understood  or  respected  the  laws,  the  religion,  the 
art,  or  the  politeness  of  the  Greeks.  Had  these 
latter  been  destroyed,  all  the  finer  elements  of  Roman 


46  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

culture  must  have  been  lost,  for  these  came  from 
Greece  during  and  after  this  very  period;  and  so 
the  world  would  have  been  permanently  poorer  and 
worse,  but  for  the  efficient  frontier  duty  done  by 
the  Antigonids  in  Macedonia. 

But  if  you  imagine  that  they  received  thanks  or 
gratitude  from  the  Greeks,  you  are  greatly  mistaken. 
For  the  Greeks  of  that  day  were  in  the  peculiar  posi- 
tion of  being  sentimentally  and  artistically  superior, 
while  they  were  materially — and,  I  will  add,  politi- 
cally— inferior  to  their  neighbours.  The  Greeks  had 
done  wonderful  things  as  a  complex  of  small 
states,  either  republican  or  aristocratic,  but  their 
mutual  jealousies  and  wars  had  worn  them  out, 
and  the  young  and  vigorous  power  of  Macedonia 
under  its  brilliant  kings  had  completely  overshadowed 
them.  Their  military  power  was  quite  fallen  into 
the  second  rank,  and  was  a  mere  appendage  to  the 
phalanx  and  heavy  cavalry  of  Alexander  and  his 
successors.  Nevertheless,  neither  the  second  Philip 
nor  Alexander  had  ever  ventured  to  treat  them  as 
mere  ordinary  subjects.  They  had  been  left  their 
constitutions  and  their  liberties.  All  that  was 
required  of  them  was  to  acknowledge  the  headship 
of  Macedon,  and  to  furnish  men  and  money  when 
war  was  declared  at  a  formal  congress  of  which  the 
king  was  the  president.  This  sort  of  imperfect 
conquest,  and  the  permission  of  separate  assem- 
blies or  parliaments  with  the  traditions  of  former 


MACEDONIA  AND  GREECE  47 

liberty  and  of  long-past  importance,  often  falsified  by 
exaggeration,  were  to  Macedon,  as  it  has  been  to  every 
power  that  ever  essayed  it  since,  a  constant  source  of 
weakness.  These  little  states  were  either,  like  Sparta 
and  Athens,  coerced  into  obedience,  and  always 
ready  to  assert  their  old  imperial  position ;  or  else  they 
were  little  democracies,  where  the  needy  and  the 
turbulent  had  the  voting  power,  and  were  ready  to 
confiscate  the  property  of  the  rich,  or  to  join  any 
power  hostile  to  Macedon  for  the  sake  of  plunder  or 
from  the  love  of  change.  In  many  industry  was 
decaying,  and  the  population  emigrating  to  new 
settlements  in  the  East ;  and  there  was  that  silly  feeling 
which  has  not  yet  died  out  of  the  world,  that  the 
existing  government  is  to  blame  for  all  misfortunes, 
and  that  any  change  of  government  or  of  laws  may 
bring  with  it  new  times  and  a  recovery  of  prosperity. 
Above  all,  where  there  were  Macedonian  garrisons 
which  occasionally  interfered  with  the  license  of  the 
democracies,  and  would  not  allow  lawlessness  and 
plunder,  there  was  a  bitter  feeling  that  all  liberty 
was  gone,  and  that  the  Greeks,  once  free,  were  now 
the  slaves  of  Macedonian  masters.  And  in  many 
senses  this  was  really  true.  The  question,  however, 
remains:  Would  the  Greeks  have  been  as  happy, 
and  in  a  deeper  sense  as  free,  if  they  had  been  allowed 
to  pass  every  mad  resolution  which  assemblies  of 
needy  and  reckless  persons  chose  to  adopt  ? 

As  soon  as  any  popular  assembly  loses  its  dignity, 


48  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

and  votes  either  from  fear  of  threats  or  from  hope 
of  bribes,  its  real  life  is  gone,  and  the  sooner  it  is 
abolished  the  better.  Now,  this  was  the  case  even 
with  the  assembly  of  Athens,  which,  we  may  assume, 
was  the  most  respectable  in  Greece.  The  lives  of 
Phocion  and  of  Demetrius  by  Plutarch  prove  it  plainly 
enough.  Flattery  of  foreign  tyrants,  supplications 
for  foreign  subsidies,  unjust  condemnations  of  their 
own  citizens,  confiscations  of  property — these  are  the 
leading  features  of  the  later  assemblies  of  Greece, 
with  very  few  exceptions.  And  the  main  exception — 
that  of  the  Achaean  League  in  its  good  days — was 
distinctly  that  of  a  constitution  where  the  propertied 
classes  had  all  the  power.  They  met  in  various  cities, 
but  the  league  voted  by  cities,  and  so  a  few  men 
of  wealth  and  public  spirit  coming  from  remote 
towns  could  counterbalance  the  whole  populace  of 
the  town  where  the  meeting  was  held.  This  league 
and  other  inferior  leagues  or  confederations  through 
Greece,  were,  however,  always  a  thorn  in  the  side  of 
Macedon,  and  were  dealt  with  by  diplomacy  rather 
than  by  force. 

As  regards  the  isolated  states,  there  were  two 
ways  of  controlling  them  possible,  and  each  was 
adopted  in  various  cases.  If  the  democracy  lasted,  it 
must  be  kept  in  control  by  a  Macedonian  garrison, 
which  interfered  when  the  peace  of  the  citizens  or 
the  property  of  the  rich  was  in  danger,  and  which 
also  prevented  the  populace  from  calling  in   some 


MACEDONIA  AND  GREECE  49 

foreign  potentate,  and  making  their  city  a  starting- 
point  for  a  foreign  war  against  Macedon.  It  is 
as  if  nowadays  home-rule  were  granted  to  Ireland, 
and  the  English  found  it  necessary  to  keep  a  garrison 
in  Dublin,  both  to  overawe  the  violence  of  the  popu- 
lace, and  to  prevent  the  Irish  Parliament  making 
a  treaty  with  some  hostile  power,  and  inviting  it  to 
occupy  Irish  harbours.  The  other  expedient  was  to 
encourage  some  ambitious  man  to  seize  the  supreme 
power  in  his  city,  and  make  himself  what  the  Greeks 
called  a  "tyrant,"  that  is,  an  irresponsible  or  absolute 
ruler,  but  trusting  to  Macedon  for  support,  and 
hence  governing  his  city  in  that  interest. 

You  must  not  be  misled  by  the  violent  effusions 
of  many  eminent  historians,  from  Herodotus  to  Free- 
man, to  imagine  that  all  these  tyrants  were  tyrants 
in  the  modern  sense — villains  who  violated  every  right 
and  every  sacred  feeling  to  gratify  their  passions;  liv- 
ing, moreover,  in  constant  terror  and  suspicion,  which 
vented  itself  in  murders  and  banishments.  Such 
tyrants  there  were  at  all  times,  and  not  infrequently 
at  this  time  also.  But  the  majority,  I  firmly  be- 
lieve, were  able  and  sincere  men,  persuaded  not 
only  by  the  world's  history,  as  they  saw  it,  but  by 
the  arguments  of  all  the  Greek  philosophers,  that 
the  masses  were  unfit  to  rule,  and  that  enlightened 
monarchy  was  the  proper  and  reasonable  form  of 
government.  These  men  did  a  great  deal  for  art 
and  culture  at  all  periods  of  Greek  history;  they 


5o  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

insisted  upon  internal  peace,  and  if  they  purchased 
this  at  the  cost  of  forbidding  public  discussions  or 
the  right  of  public  meetings  to  protest  against  their 
government,  they  certainly  got  some  return  for  their 
bargain.  It  was  the  habit  of  the  Macedonian  kings 
to  encourage  these  ambitious  men,  and  yet  so  thor- 
oughly was  the  taste  for  talking  and  voting  engrained 
in  the  people,  that,  however  virtuous  or  just  such  men 
might  be,  it  was  thought  an  act  of  religious  patriot- 
ism to  murder  them — nay,  if  possible,  to  torture 
them  —  as  a  punishment  for  their  usurpation. 

You  can  feel,  then,  the  great  difficulties  connected 
with  the  government  of  Greece  by  Macedonia,  seeing 
that  it  was  an  imperfect  conquest,  and  that  the  ideas 
of  the  world  were  strongly  in  favour  of  preserving,  in 
appearance  at  least,  the  liberties  of  Greece.  It  was 
bad  enough  to  be  obliged  to  reconquer  again  and 
again  the  northern  barbarians;  it  was  far  worse 
to  have  to  deal  with  a  number  of  small,  jealous, 
turbulent  states,  which  were  always  passing  resolu- 
tions against  Macedon,  always  calling  in  her  great 
rival  Egypt,  always  bringing  to  mind  the  old  days, 
when  Macedonia  was  obscure  and  despised,  while 
Greece  played  the  leading  part  in  the  world.  It  was 
this  social  and  intellectual  inferiority  which  made 
Philip  and  Alexander  rather  affect  to  be  Greeks  them- 
selves, and  assume  a  Greek  genealogy,  education, 
and  manners,  than  subdue  Greece  as  they  were  able 
to  do,  and  reduce  it  to  a  dependent  province. 


MACEDONIA  AND  GREECE  51 

And  this  weakness  proved  the  ultimate  ruin  of  the 
kingdom. 

The  day  came  when  Rome  began  to  meddle  with 
the  affairs  of  the  East;  or  rather  when  first  the  out- 
rages of  Illyrian  pirates  upon  Roman  ships,  and 
then  the  interference  of  Philip  V  of  Macedon  in  the 
second  Punic  war,  made  some  such  policy  necessary. 
No  sooner  did  the  Greeks  perceive  this  than  they 
saw  a  splendid  opportunity  of  working  Rome 
against  Macedon. 

By  a  curious  coincidence,  this  new  and  still  more 
powerful  neighbour  had  the  same  kind  of  position  in 
civilisation  as  the  kingdom  of  Philip  and  Alexander 
— a  great  military  power  with  a  culture  quite  inferior 
to  the  Greeks,  and  most  anxious  to  adopt  it.  Hence 
the  petty  Greek  states  were  at  first  treated  by  Rome 
with  extravagant  courtesy.  To  be  allowed  to  com- 
pete at  the  public  Greek  games,  or  to  be  initiated  in 
Greek  mysteries,  was  thought  a  high  honour,  and  to 
write  or  speak  in  Greek  a  distinction,  at  Rome. 
All  the  tall  talk  about  ancient  liberties,  about  the 
virtue  of  slaying  tyrants,  about  the  equality  of  all  free 
citizens,  was  paraded  for  the  Romans  and  they 
undertook  the  task,  which  every  Successor  of  Alex- 
ander had  put  forward  in  turn  as  a  political  watch- 
word, of  liberating  Greece. 

And  unfortunately  this  coincided  with  the  reign  in 
Macedon  of  Philip  V — a  man  in  whom  military 
talents  and  agreeable  manners  were  combined 
with   unbridled   passions   and   political   incapacity. 


52  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

While  he,  who  had  succeeded  to  his  kingdom 
as  the  darling  of  all  Greece,  was  alienating  his  friends 
by  private  outrages  and  public  deceit,  the  Romans 
were  making  capital  out  of  their  unselfish  policy  of 
liberating  without  annexing,  and  of  respecting  the 
ancient  dignity  of  the  Greeks.  The  people  of 
Pergamum  even  invented  for  the  Romans  a  Greek 
genealogy,  and  the  story  of  JEne&s  starting  from  the 
ruins  of  Troy  for  Italy  became  an  article  of 
history  at  Rome,  owing  to  which  the  Romans  began 
to  write  letters  in  Greek  from  their  senate;  they 
began  to  shower  benefits  upon  their  ancestral  home, 
Ilion;  it  was  a  claim  to  support  from  Rome  to  state 
that  your  ancestors  were  among  those  who  had  not 
taken  part  with  the  Greeks  in  the  Trojan  war,  or  had 
even  joined  the  Trojans.  So  we  too  have  seen  ancient 
history  paraded,  or  rather  dressed  up,  by  way  of 
showing  that  present  legislation  should  direct  itself 
to  the  atonement  of  hypothetical  crimes  committed 
against  the  mythical  ancestors  of  imaginary  descen- 
dants; in  fact,  the  substitution  of  maudlin  and  false 
sentimentality  for  justice  and  common-sense. 

The  conflict  ended,  as  you  know,  in  two  great 
wars — the  first  against  Philip  V,  closing  with  the 
battle  of  Cvnoscephalae  ( 108),  the  second  with  the  war 
against  Perseus,  and  with  Pydna  (168).  The  first  was 
hailed  by  the  Greeks  as  a  great  victory,  and  the 
proclamation  of  Flamininus  at  Corinth  that  all  the 
Greeks  under  Macedon  should  now  be  free  and 


MACEDONIA  AND  GREECE  53 

independent  caused  transports  of  delight.  Home- 
rule  was  established  in  every  little  Greek  city,  and 
a  reign  of  peace  and  prosperity  was  confidently 
expected. 

How  is  it,  then,  that  within  thirty  years  the  defeat 
of  Perseus  at  Pydna  and  the  final  conquest  of 
Macedon  were  regarded  by  these  same  Greeks  not 
as  a  more  complete  victory,  but  as  a  crushing  defeat 
and  a  terrible  calamity? 

The  history  of  this  change  is  one  of  the  most 
instructive  in  ancient  history,  especially  as  we  are 
face  to  face  with  similar  problems  all  over  Europe 
in  our  own  day.  What  the  Greeks  were  always 
longing  for,  ever  since  they  fell  under  Macedonian 
sway,  was  home-rule,  and  not  merely  home-rule  for 
all  Greece,  but  separate  home-rule  for  each  little 
subdivision  of  it.  This  is  what  the  Romans  gave 
them;  and  what  resulted  was  that  the  populace  in 
each  town,  where  there  was  poverty,  began  to  plunder 
the  property  of  the  rich;  or  else  the  leagues  of  cities, 
such  as  the  Achaean  and  ^Etolian,  began  to  make 
conquests  and  oppress  their  neighbours;  and  finally 
the  disorders  of  this  home-rule  became  such  that 
every  person  of  property,  and  almost  every  person 
of  sense,  went  to  Rome  to  entreat  the  great  republic 
to  interfere.  It  was  represented  to  the  Romans  that, 
if  they  had  already  interfered  with  Macedonia  and 
given  the  Greeks  their  liberty,  they  were  bound  at 
the  same  time  not  to  permit  civil  war  or  confiscation. 


54  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

The  Romans  did  what  they  could  by  way  of 
peaceful  intervention.  They  sent  constant  commis- 
sions and  gave  decisions  in  these  quarrels;  they 
advised,  they  warned,  they  threatened;  last  of  all 
they  actually  threatened  that  they  would  refrain 
from  all  control,  which  was  felt  to  be  the  worst 
danger  of  all. 

But  during  these  weary  negotiations  the  party 
at  Rome  which  had  posed  as  Philhellenes,  and 
carried  out  the  sentimental  civilities  to  the  Greeks, 
like  Flamininus,  began  to  lose  ground,  and  a  very 
different  party  arose  who  were  for  no  more  nonsense, 
who  thought  all  this  talk  of  liberty  mere  fooling,  and 
who  were  determined  on  stopping  these  interminable 
negotiations  with  a  strong  hand.  They  intended 
to  abolish  all  this  local  and  separate  home-rule,  and 
establish  a  strict  union  of  Greece  with  Rome,  or 
rather  under  Rome.  They  found  strong  allies  in 
the  scanty  richer  classes  throughout  Greece,  many 
of  whom  were  dissolute  and  idle,  seeking  to  ingratiate 
themselves  at  Rome  by  flattery  and  complaisance, 
and  by  vilifying  their  own  people  with  the  grossest 
want  of  patriotism.  But  there  were  also  the  serious 
people  who  wanted  peace  and  security,  and  they, 
much  as  they  regretted  the  loss  of  old  traditions, 
were  determined  that  there  was  no  safety  possible 
except  in  close  union  with  Rome. 

The  lower  classes,  on  the  other  hand,  the  rabble, 
the  poor,  the  socialists,  began  to  look  on  Rome  as 


MACEDONIA  AND  GREECE  55 

the  chief  danger  to  their  independence  and  the  chief 
obstacle  in  letting  them  carry  out  their  views.  They 
found  that  if  Macedon  had  chastised  them  with 
whips,  Rome  was  likely  to  chastise  them  with 
scorpions.  So  when  they  saw  a  new  straining  of 
the  relations  between  Rome  and  Macedon,  and  knew 
that  the  latter  had  long  been  preparing  for  a  new 
conflict,  all  their  hopes  turned  to  King  Perseus, 
whom  they  encouraged  with  their  sympathy,  while 
they  were  flattering  and  paying  court  in  words 
to  the  Romans.  These  latter  were  not  blind  to  the 
real  sentiments  of  Greece,  and  during  the  long  course 
and  doubtful  issue  of  the  last  Macedonian  war  must 
have  seen  plainly  in  the  conduct  of  their  Greek 
auxiliaries  that  they  had  to  deal  with  faithless  allies. 
All  they  had  done  in  the  way  of  liberation,  of  senti- 
mental politeness,  of  remission  of  taxes,  had  fallen 
upon  ungrateful  soil.  And  this  ingratitude  was  so 
far  justified  in  that  there  was  a  party  at  Rome  which 
fomented  Greek  quarrels,  and  triumphed  in  the  tur- 
moil and  confusion  of  Greek  politics.  Still  more, 
it  lay  in  the  sentimental  complaint  that  the  Romans 
were  a  cold,  unsympathetic,  stupid  race,  vastly 
inferior,  socially,  to  the  Greeks,  who  were  ever  being 
insulted,  misunderstood,  despised,  and  patronised 
by  them.  If  you  knew  how  powerful  a  factor  this 
social  question  has  been  in  the  modern  difficulties 
of  Ireland  with  England,  you  would  attach  great 
weight  to  this  remark.     The  result  was  that  after 


56  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

the  battle  of  Pydna,  when  endless  compromising 
correspondence  were  seized  among  King  Perseus' 
papers,  the  Romans  made  a  searching  and  remorse- 
less inquisition  into  the  Macedonian  sympathies 
of  each  city,  and  deported  to  Italy  as  captives  all  the 
so-called  patriot  party  from  many  cities.  The  case 
of  the  one  thousand  Achaeans  is  the  best  known,  and 
perhaps  the  least  excusable,  as  we  hear  that  there  was 
no  definite  evidence  against  them;1  but  in  spite 
of  all  that  Polybius,  who  was  one  of  them,  can  say, 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  it  was  the  only  way  of 
pacifying  and  quieting  Greece.  But  it  was  done  at 
a  terrible  expense,  with  a  great  deal  of  hardship  and 
injustice,  and  to  the  profit  of  many  worthless  Roman- 
izers  who  now  got  the  reward  of  their  infamous  and 
treacherous  truckling  to  their  masters.  It  is,  of 
course,  these  wretched  creatures  who  are  pilloried 
for  us  by  the  deported  home- rule  party,  and  we  are 
told  to  believe  that  was  the  sort  of  person  who  sold 
for  money  and  for  blood  the  liberties  of  his  country. 
Fortunately  we  have  the  evidence  of  Polybius  him- 
self, a  leading  member  of  the  home-rule  party,  who 
struggled  as  long  as  he  could  for  the  independence 
of  Achaea.  But  after  his  long  captivity,  and  a  great 
intimacy  with  the  Romans  and  the  politics  of  the 
world  outside  the  petty  cantons  of  Greece,  he  gives  it 

1  And  yet  was  there  no  evidence  ?  Who  knows  how  many 
autographs  were  denied,  how  much  testimony  suppressed  or 
falsified  ? 


MACEDONIA  AND  GREECE  57 

as  his  deliberate  opinion  that  home-rule  was  imprac- 
ticable, and  that  the  union  with  Rome  was  the  only 
reasonable  solution  for  the  difficulties  of  civil  war, 
anarchy,  confusion,  and  confiscation  which  were  the 
miserable  heritage  left  to  decaying  Greece  by  her 
past  history. 

The  drama  ended  by  a  hopeless  and  bloody 
insurrection,  conducted  with  despair  and  cruelty, 
in  which  the  so-called  patriots  behaved  much  as  the 
Irish  patriots  did  in  1798,  and  made  their  war  with 
Rome  the  excuse  for  executing,  torturing,  and 
plundering  their  political  opponents.  The  victory 
at  Corinth  settled  forever  the  question  of  home-rule, 
and  put  the  country  under  the  control  of  the  Roman 
governor  and  of  the  propertied  classes,  who  thus 
won  their  fatal  victory  in  this  melancholy  struggle. 
From  this  time  the  political  history  of  Greece  closes 
for  many  centuries.1 

1  I  have  been  obliged  to  omit  in  this  lecture  all  mention  of 
the  Greek  cities  of  Asia  Minor  and  the  islands,  which  played  a 
very  important  part  in  the  history  of  the  day.  But  these  com- 
munities are  rather  associated  with  the  kingdoms  of  Syria  and 
Egypt,  which  exercised  or  claimed  sovereignty  over  them,  than 
with  Macedon,  and  their  fortunes  were  not  settled  in  connection 
with  Greece  so  much  as  in  connection  with  Asia  Minor,  if  we  except 
Rhodes,  which  was  ruined  commercially  for  its  sympathy  with 
Macedon  in  the  final  great  war.  The  great  difference  between 
Asiatic  and  European  Greek  cities  was  this,  that  the  former  had 
long  learned  to  be  content  with  local  self-government  and  had 
given  up  all  claim  to  political  independence  or  to  imperial  rights. 
Hence  they  long  retained  the  substance,  which  their  European 
brethren  lost  by  grasping  at  the  shadow,  of  independence. 


58  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

But  what  was  the  final  settlement  of  Macedon? 
The  conflict  was  here  not  one  of  politics,  but  of 
military  powers,  one  of  which  had  ruled,  and  the 
other  was  going  to  rule,  the  world.  The  triumph 
of  Rome  was  no  half-victory,  and  the  conquered 
power  was  indeed,  to  use  a  notorious  modern  expres- 
sion, saignee  d,  blanc.  Every  person  of  importance, 
all  the  richer  classes,  all  the  officials,  the  whole  court 
— all  were  carried  captives  to  Italy  with  their  king. 
Nothing  was  left  in  the  country  but  what  some 
extreme  patriots  would  like  to  see  left  in  Ireland — 
the  poor  and  the  ignorant.  But  by  way  of  parody 
on  this  wholesale  slavery  the  country  was  broken 
up  into  four  sections,  and  in  each  of  them  was  estab- 
lished what  was  called  in  the  shibboleth  of  that  day 
a  free  constitution,  a  republic,  where  each  man  could 
talk  and  vote  in  a  parliament,  and  pass  resolutions 
binding  the  minority.  Polybius,  a  sensible  man, 
wonders  that  the  people  were  not  content  with  this 
precious  boon,  more  especially  as  they  now  paid 
only  one-half  the  taxes  they  had  formerly  paid  to 
their  kings.  The  fact  is  that  they  were  put  under 
the  most  intolerable  restrictions.  The  four  sections 
were  forbidden  all  intercourse,  connubial,  commer- 
cial, or  otherwise,  while  Roman  traders  passed  freely 
all  through  the  land.  Old  connections  and  friend- 
ships were  dislocated,  things  were  made  criminal 
which  had  once  been  lawful,  the  development  of 
industry  was  rendered  impossible,  and  the  march  of 


MACEDONIA  AND  GREECE  59 

civilisation  in  the  country  rudely  checked.  All  the 
men  of  family  and  culture  had  been  removed;  and 
what  did  the  wretched  Macedonians  get  in  return  for 
all  this?  A  so-called  free  constitution;  that  is,  the 
substitution  of  little  parochial  parliaments  for  the 
rule  of  the  royal  house  which  had  brought  Macedon 
all  its  splendour  and  to  which  the  nation  were  loyally 
and  deeply  attached!  Need  we  wonder  that  they 
broke  out  time  after  time  into  bloody  insurrections, 
that  every  impostor  who  claimed  royal  blood  became 
a  popular  pretender,  and  that  after  several  serious 
struggles  the  Romans  found  their  experiment  in 
constitution-making  so  egregious  a  failure  that  they 
were  obliged  to  reduce  the  whole  country  to  a  prov- 
ince ruled  directly  by  a  military  governor?  The 
comedy  of  it  is  that  they  blamed  the  wretched  Mace- 
donians for  not  appreciating  liberty,  instead  of 
themselves  for  such  folly  as  to  imagine  that  the  name 
of  a  republic  can  outweigh  the  effect  of  massacres 
and  deportations,  and  the  violation  of  every  noble 
tradition. 

Thus  the  history  of  that  great  and  dominant 
people  ends  in  tears  and  in  blood,  and  ends  forever. 
While  Greece  never  lost  the  intellectual  superiority 
which  made  the  very  slaves  of  her  race  the  teachers 
and  advisers  of  the  world,  and  while  her  traditions 
have  been  great  enough  to  cause  a  national  reju- 
venescence, Macedonia  as  a  nation  disappears  from 
history.    It   was    the   battlefield  for  the  Romans, 


60  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

when  in  their  great  civil  war  they  met  at  Philippi; 
it  was  the  home  of  a  Christian  church  of  St.  Paul's 
foundation,  in  whose  time  Philippi  and  Thessalonica 
appear  as  flourishing  Greek  towns;  but  Macedonia 
as  such  was  blotted  out  from  the  catalogue  of  nations. 
It  seems  to  me  also  that  with  Macedonian  rule 
there  disappeared  from  Hellenism  a  valuable  type, 
which  has  figured  largely  in  modern  civilisation — I 
mean  the  type  of  the  sporting  country  gentleman, 
who  despises  the  restraints  of  city  life  and  lives  a 
life  of  physical  energy  in  the  pure  air  of  untutored 
nature.  How  deeply  this  feeling  was  engrained  in 
Macedonian  life  appears  from  the  curious  absence  of 
any  important  capital  of  the  Antigonid  dynasty. 
While  Egypt  and  Syria  were  all  centred  in  the  great 
cities  of  Alexandria  and  Antioch,  we  never  hear  of 
any  Macedonian  city  important  enough  to  exercise 
any  influence.  Pella  and  J£g&  were  always,  so  far 
as  we  know,  insignificant.  The  reason  for  this  pe- 
culiarity I  consider  to  be  the  habits  of  the  Mace- 
donian nobility  and  gentry,  who  would  not  settle  in 
a  city,  and  who  would  not  take  to  commerce  or  town 
amusements  like  the  Greeks.  But  these  latter  made 
town  life  the  almost  universal  type  of  Hellenism, 
much  to  its  ultimate  loss  and  decay.  The  famous 
seventh  oration  of  Dion  Chrysostom,  which  I  have 
treated  very  fully  in  another  work,  shows  how  an 
acute  and  sympathetic  observer  regretted  this  nar- 
rowing of  later  Greek  life. 


MACEDONIA  AND  GREECE  61 

There  have  been  cases  where  a  great  body  of 
exiles  have  produced  an  effect  in  their  new  home. 
Such,  for  example,  was  the  powerful  influence  on 
civilisation  exercised  by  the  French  Huguenot 
refugees  upon  England  and  Ireland,  when  they  left 
their  homes  upon  the  revocation  of  the  edict  of 
Nantes.  The  whole  of  the  nobility — that  great 
dominant  nobility — of  Macedon  was  deported  and 
settled  in  Roman  or  Italian  towns  or  villages.  We 
should  have  expected  that  some  distinguished 
Italian  would  have  sprung  from  this  new  noble 
blood  introduced  into  the  country.  And  yet  the 
whole  Macedonian  importation  disappears  abso- 
lutely, unless  you  recall  the  fact  that  the  son  of  the 
captive  king  earned  a  poor  livelihood  as  a  petty 
clerk  in  a  country  town.  Truly  Rome  was  a  great 
boa-constrictor,  which  not  only  enveloped,  but 
crushed  a  large  part  of  the  culture  of  the  world. 


EGYPT 


THE  PTOLEMAIC  DYNASTY 

i.  Ptolemy  Soter      -        -        -        -321  (king  3o6)-285 

2.  Ptolemy  Philadelphia 285-246 

3.  Ptolemy  Euergetes  I    -         -         -         -         -  246-221 

4.  Ptolemy  Philopator 221-204 

5.  Ptolemy  Epiphanes 204-181 

7.  Ptolemy  Philometor 181-146 

9.  Ptolemy  Euergetes  II  (Physcon)  -        -        -  146-117 

10.  Ptolemy  Soter  II,    1 

11.  Ptolemy  Alexander  J 

12.  Ptolemy  Auletes 80-51 

13.  Cleopatra  (and  her  brother)         ...  51-30 

[Ptolemies  VI  and  VIII  were  children,  who  were  only 
nominal  kings  for  a  few  weeks,  but  whose  names  occur  in  the 
Egyptian  royal  lists.  Ptolemies  X  and  XI  went  on  and  off 
the  throne  alternately,  so  their  whole  joint  period  only  is  given 
in  this  skeleton  chronology.] 


117-80 


LECTURE  III 
EGYPT 

We  approach  today  a  subject  not  less  in  magnitude 
and  importance  than  the  last,  but  certainly  less  compli- 
cated. The  history  of  Egypt  as  a  Hellenistic  kingdom 
is  a  very  consistent  and  uniform  history,  for  though 
the  Ptolemies  were  engaged  in  many  foreign  wars 
and  in  all  the  complicated  diplomacies  of  the  world, 
the  internal  development  and  the  problems  of  gov- 
ernment in  Egypt  were  very  clear  and  definite. 
But  as  I  was  obliged  in  the  last  lecture  to  deal  chiefly 
with  politics,  so  I  will  endeavour  to  bring  out  social 
and  intellectual  life  in  the  present  discourse. 

Egypt,  as  you  know,  was  seized  as  his  lawful 
conquest  by  Ptolemy,  son  of  Lagus,  a  native  Mace- 
donian prince  and  personal  intimate  of  Alexander, 
who  had  fought  all  through  the  great  campaigns, 
and  in  later  years  wrote  the  best  account  of  Alex- 
ander's life,  known  to  us  unfortunately  only  through 
the  citations  of  Arrian.  This  Ptolemy  was  a  very 
clear-headed  man,  who  saw  from  the  beginning, 
what  most  of  the  other  generals  did  not  see,  that  to 
keep  together  Alexander's  whole  empire  was  im- 
possible, and  that,  when  it  was  broken  up  into  sepa- 
rate kingdoms,  Egypt  was  the  richest  province  and 
the  most  easily  defended. 

65 


66  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

I  need  hardly  remind  you  that  it  is  compassed 
with  deserts,  and  that  it  cannot  be  attacked  except 
through  these  deserts,  or  with  great  difficulty  by 
sea,  for  the  constant  north  wind  and  the  shallows 
around  the  Delta  made  ancient  navigation  there  a 
thing  of  the  utmost  peril.  Accordingly  a_good  river 
fleet  and  good  defences  upon  the  outer  mouths  of  the 
Nile,  the  Canopic  and  Pelusiac,  make  it  impregnable. 
As  you  also  know,  the  fertility  of  Egypt  is  enormous ; 
though  its  area  is  only  about  two-thirds  that  of 
Ireland,  it  was  able  to  support  perhaps  seven  mil- 
lions of  people,  and,  moreover,  to  produce  corn 
enough  for  great  exports.  It  was  said  that  to  bring 
up  a  child  to  maturity  in  Egypt  cost  about  three  and 
one-half  dollars  of  your  money — a  state  of  things 
which  I  remember  in  Ireland,  when  it  cost  no  more 
to  bring  up  a  child  to  full  size  on  potatoes. 

The  further  source  of  wealth  which  Egypt  then 
commanded  was  the  sea  route  from  India  by  the 
Red  Sea,  which  was  the  highway  for  all  the  rarities 
and  wonders  of  the  East  lately  revealed  to  European 
ambition  and  European  luxury.1 

The  mart  for  all  these  things  was  Alexandria,  the 

1  How  wide  was  this  connection  appears  from  the  fragments  of 
a  farce  found  by  Grenfell  and  Hunt,  in  which  a  barbarian  king 
is  introduced  talking  a  strange  jargon.  (Cf.  Oxyrhynchus 
Papyri,  III,  pap.  413.)  The  last  discovery  concerning  this  jar- 
gon is  that  it  has  been  read  as  Canarese!  (Cf.  E.  Hultzsch  in 
Hermes  for  1904,  pp.  307  ff.)  This  is  justly  compared  by  Blass 
to  the  Punic  passage  in  Plautus'  Mercator. 


EGYPT  67 

foundation  of  Alexander  which  has  perhaps  brought 
him  the  greatest  fame,  though  it  consisted  in  little 
more  than  bringing  the  old  Greek  mart  of  Naucratis 
down  its  arm  of  the  river  to  the  sea.  The  same  king 
founded  seventeen  Alexandrias,  from  Asia  Minor  as 
far  as  the  Punjaub.  The  present  Candahar  (Isken- 
der,  Al-Iskender,  etc.)  is  another  still  remaining. 
But  however  good  the  insight  of  Alexander  in  the 
foundation,  it  was  the  opening  up  of  eastern  traffic 
and  the  enlightened  rule  of  Ptolemy  which  made  it 
the  principal  city  of  the  world.  The  population 
consisted  from  the  beginning  of  (1)  Egyptians,  the 
old  inhabitants  of  the  village  Rakotis,  embraced  in 
the  new  site.  These  were  the  lowest  and  poorest 
parts  of  the  population.  (2)  Jews,  whose  sudden  and 
hitherto  mysterious  alliance  with  Alexander  I  have 
explained  to  you  already  (p.  38),  and  who  followed 
his  invitation  in  crowds  to  the  new  foundation,  where 
he  settled  them  under  their  own  magistrates,  and 
with  certain  rights  and  privileges  which  were  after- 
ward supposed  to  amount  to  full  civic  rights,  though 
they  did  not  imply  so  much.1  The  other  races 
were  the  really  dominant,  viz.,  (3)  the  Macedonians, 
who  continued  at  this  new  centre  to  form  a  military 

1  This  statement  of  Josephus  was  disputed  by  various  critics, 
till  I  found  that  there  was  a  village  called  Samaria  in  the  Fayyum 
under  the  second  Ptolemy,  and  also  other  allusions  to  them, 
which  I  have  published  in  my  edition  of  the  Petrie  Papyri.  Since 
that  discovery  more  evidence  from  the  second  century  before 
Christ  has  come  in. 


68  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

aristocracy  about  the  court  which  proclaimed  form- 
ally any  new  king  as  the  approved  choice  of  the 
citizen-soldiers  of  Macedonia.  In  the  case  of  weak 
or  infant  kings,  they  assumed  the  power  for  which  we 
can  show  parallels  in  those  military  bodies  called 
praetorian  guards,  or  mamelukes,  or  janissaries,  at 
courts  otherwise  despotic,  over  all  the  other  subjects. 
(4)  Lastly  come  the  Greeks,  in  many  respects  the 
most  important,  for  they  held  high  posts  in  the  army, 
where  they  were  well-tried  and  hereditary  mercena- 
ries; about  the  court,  where  they  often  displaced  in 
the  civil  service  the  prouder  Macedonians;  in  trade, 
where  they  contended  with  the  Jews;  and  lastly,  in 
the  museum  and  university,  where  they  had  it  all 
their  own  way. 

This  conglomerate  of  nations,  gathered  into  a 
great  capital — full  of  refinement  and  luxury,  of  splen- 
dour in  shows  and  military  pageants,  of  great  disso- 
luteness side  by  side  with  the  most  serious  scientific 
study — soon  became  a  sort  of  world  of  its  own,  and 
the  Alexandrians  were  known  through  Hellenistic 
history  as  "a  peculiar  people,  zealous  of  bad  works." 
Yet,  in  spite  of  its  cruel  mob,  in  spite  of  its  wild 
insurrections  and  massacres,  which  often  remind  one 
of  the  Paris  mob  of  the  revolutions,  think  what  we 
owe  to  Alexandria!  First  of  all,  the  Greek  version 
of  the  Old  Testament.  Secondly,  the  development 
of  pure  mathematics  and  of  mechanics,  which  led 
the  way  for  the  great   men  of   Europe,  Descartes, 


EGYPT  69 

Pascal,  and  Leibnitz,  when  they  set  out  upon  that 
great  voyage  of  discovery  in  science  which  has  revo- 
lutionised modern  life,  and  of  which  the  immortal 
Euclid  is  still  the  first  great  name.1  Thirdly,  that 
first  great  essay  in  really  religious  philosophy  which, 
under  the  name  of  Neo-Platonism,  passed  to  the 
Mystics  of  the  Middle  Ages  and  has  been  the  parent 
of  the  deepest  and  purest  elements  in  all  our  modern 
religions,  humanly  considered. 

You  will  wonder  that  I  have  not  yet  mentioned 
literature.  The  fact  is  that  the  influence  of  Alexan- 
dria was  here  of  a  very  peculiar  kind:  indirectly, 
enormous  and  permanent ;  directly,  you  might  think 
it  an  epoch  of  decadence,  but  for  the  idylls  of 
Theocritus. 

It  is  curious,  but  not  strange,  that  from  a  city  life, 
in  the  middle  of  sand  hills,  between  a  great  lagoon 
and  a  tideless  sea,  should  spring  the  only  poetry  in 
all  Greek  literature  which  makes  the  delights  of 
rural  life — the  bleating  of  lambs,  the  whispering  of  the 
stream,  "the  moan  of  doves  in  immemorial  elms,  and 
murmuring  of  innumerable  bees" — a  blessed  recrea- 
tion for  the  cultivated  and  weary  townsman.  This 
reaction  from  a  highly  artificial  city  life  is  noticeable 
in  other  societies,  and  there  was  no  extravagance  of 
the  Italian  Renaissance,  when  pedants  posed  as 
shepherds  and  imitated  the  supposed  innocence  of 
the  artless  swain,  which  had  not  its  prototype  in  the 

1 1  shall  return  to  this  subject  in  Lecture  V. 


7o  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

University  of  Alexandria.  You  have  the  Arcadia 
of  Sannazaro,  concerning  which  I  have  spoken  at 
large  in  my  Rambles  and  Studies;  you  have  such 
poems  as  Milton's  Lycidas,  where  his  college  tutor 
appears  as  old  Damcetas,  a  rustic;  in  fact,  you  have 
all  the  pastoral  poetry  of  France  and  Germany,  all 
the  art  of  Watteau  and  his  school  down  to  the  Trianon 
of  Marie  Antoinette — a  thousand  other  develop- 
ments of  artificial  innocence  are  derived  from 
Alexandria. 

The  second  great  inheritance  left  by  Alexandria 
(to  which  I  shall  return)  was  the  love-story — I 
mean  that  kind  which  forms  the  backbone  of  all 
our  modern  novels.  The  notion  came  in  from  the 
East,  and  is  first  mentioned  in  the  fragments  of 
Chares  of  Mytilene,  a  companion  of  Alexander  in 
the  East. 

So  you  see  the  world  is  richer  by  this  now  gigantic 
branch  of  literature  on  account  of  Alexandria,  and 
though  it  is  more  than  probable  that  some  other 
society,  some  modern  society,  would  have  thought 
of  it,  I  beg  to  remind  you  that  the  Greeks — a  great 
literary  nation,  who  were  just  as  familiar  with  fall- 
ing in  love  as  we  are — never  thought  of  it  in  any  of 
their  tragedies  or  histories,  till  it  was  produced  by 
Callimachus.1 

1 1  need  not  tell  you,  what  you  will  find  in  my  Greek  Life  and 
Thought,  that  the  love  affairs  in  the  Comedy  of  Menander  were 
of  a  wholly  different  kind,  and  on  a  far  lower  level. 


EGYPT  7i 

I  will  not  detain  you  here  with  the  indirect  effects 
of  Alexandria's  work  on  the  Roman  poets.1 

These  great  literary  and  scientific  results  were 
achieved  by  the  first  and  second  Ptolemies  in  found- 
ing what  may  fairly  be  called  the  University  of 
Alexandria,  with  its  college  of  fellows  (the  Museum), 
its  botanical  and  zoological  gardens,  and  its  great 
library.  The  Museum  gave  it  that  precious  charac- 
ter as  a  home  for  leisure  and  research,  as  well  as 
ultimately  a  teaching  power,  which  we  possess  in 
Oxford  and  Cambridge,  and  which  has  been  lost 
or  forgotten  in  those  new  foundations  of  mere 
examining  bodies  falsely  called  universities.  But 
unfortunately  the  Museum  was  far  too  strictly  under 
royal  patronage,  and  suffered  by  it.  The  republican 
character  of  the  private  corporations  called  the 
schools,  or  academies,  at  Athens  was  far  more 
stable  and  independent.  The  Museum  and  library 
were  part  of  the  royal  quarter  of  the  city,  close  to 
the  palaces  built  by  successive  Ptolemies — for  they 
were  in  this  like  modern  kings,  who  will  not  be  con- 
tent with  the  palaces  of  predecessors — and  so  active 
was  the  trade  in  books  copied  by  slaves  from  the 
originals  in  the  Museum,  and  sold  over  the  world, 
that  a  conflagration  among  the  ships  in  the  har- 
bour during  Julius  Caesar's  campaign  spread  to  the 

1  All  of  them  (save  Horace) — Catullus,  Propertius,  Ovid,  even 
Virgil — owe  the  Alexandrians  far  more  than  they  do  the  older  and 
greater  Greek  masters.     Cf.  below,  Lecture  V. 


72  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

stores  on  the  shore  and  destroyed  so  many  books  that 
the  accident  was  by  and  by  magnified  into  the 
destruction  of  the  great  library  itself. 

The  rest  of  the  city  was  designed  in  a  style  rather 
handsome  than  picturesque,  its  figure  being  deter- 
mined by  two  great  thoroughfares  at  right  angles, 
whose  intersection  was  the  acknowledged  centre, 
and  at  whose  extremities  were  the  four  principal 
gates.  The  other  new  features  in  the  city,  which 
was  a  model  to  a  hundred  others,  were  its  system- 
atic lighting  of  the  streets,  and  its  colonnades. 

But  you  will  be  impatient  to  know  what  I  have 
to  say  about  the  rest  of  Egypt  and  the  Ptolemaic 
rule  there,  and  how  the  old  culture  of  Egypt  har- 
monised with  all  this  mushroom  splendour  of  Alex- 
andria. The  fact  is  that  the  first  and  second 
Ptolemies  thought  very  little  about  Egypt,  except 
as  a  source  of  revenue,  and  as  a  nation  to  be  kept 
quiet  while  it  fed  the  glory  of  the  Graeco-Macedonian 
rule.  Though  the  first  Ptolemy  did  found  Ptole- 
mais  in  upper  Egypt  (the  modern  Meushieh),  some 
eighty  miles  below  Thebes,  and  though  we  hear 
of  Greek  festivals  held  there,  it  is  most  noteworthy 
that  he  did  not  give  the  city  of  Alexandria  a  Greek 
constitution,  with  a  senate  and  an  assembly.  He 
knew  Hellenic  assemblies  too  well.  Still,  all  the 
care  of  these  two  men  was  directed,  not  merely  to 
making  their  military  position  secure,  but  also  to 
making  Alexandria  the  rival  of  Athens.     Now,  for 


EGYPT  73 

military  purposes  the  Egyptians  were  accounted 
nearly  useless.  For  several  generations  back,  Greek 
mercenaries  had  supplanted  the  old  military  caste 
in  Egypt,  and  all  kings  of  Egypt — indigenous,  Per- 
sian, Macedonian — trusted  to  a  supply  of  paid  for- 
eign soldiers,  who  were  as  veterans  settled  with 
property  and  privileges,  and  became  a  sort  of  new 
military  caste,  hereditary  in  character.1  The  native 
Egyptians  were  mostly  disarmed,  and  were  not  used 
as  soldiers  till  a  great  crisis  under  the  fourth  Ptolemy 
in  the  year  217  B.  C. 

As  regards  literature  or  science,  the  Greeks  had 
long  laid  aside  the  habit  of  consulting  the  wis- 
dom of  Egypt  and  of  the  East,  from  which  their 
civilisation  had  once  sprung,  and  no  attempt  was 
made,  beyond  bringing  out  the  annals  of  the  old  king- 
dom in  Greek  (by  Manetho),  to  examine  and  utilise 
all  the  deep  and  occult  lore  of  the  priests.  We  may 
depend  upon  it  that  these  priests  were  not  willing  to 
impart  it  to  the  upstart  Greeks,  and  the  hieroglyphic 
writing  and  strange  language  were  almost  impene- 
trable barriers  to  the  few  Greeks  who  attempted  to 
learn  them.  So  the  wisdom  and  the  art  of  Memphis, 
Thebes,  Heliopolis,  and  all  the  other  splendid  old 
Egyptian  cities  remained  a  thing  apart  and  foreign 
to  the  Alexandrians;  the  Egyptians  were  regarded 

1  The  Pelrie  Papyri,  which  it  was  my  highest  good  fortune  to 
decipher  and  publish,  give  us  a  quantity  of  information  about 
one  of  these  settlements  (probably  the  most  important)  in  the 
Fayyum. 


74  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

as  a  foreign  and  subject  population,  only  fit  to  labour 
and  pay  taxes,  and  no  systematic  attempt  was  made 
to  Hellenize  them. 

Such  has  always  been  the  fate  of  unhappy  Egypt. 
From  the  earliest  days  her  kings  and  governors  have 
been  strangers,  and  her  people — a  beautiful,  gentle, 
laborious  people — have  been  so  engrained  with  the 
instinct  of  submission  that  it  will  require  long  efforts 
to  reverse  this  ancient  and  lamentable  education  in 
slavery. 

But  in  the  days  of  the  Ptolemies  Egypt  still  pos- 
sessed her  powerful  and  native  priestly  caste,  and 
with  it  a  fund  of  resistance  to  the  Macedonian  kings 
with  which  they  were  soon  obliged  to  reckon. 
Neither  the  first  nor  the  second  Ptolemy  has  left 
us  many  monuments  of  note ;  the  second,  indeed,  one 
which  already  shows  the  beginning  of  the  Egyptian 
reaction — a  ruined  temple,  made  wholly  of  red  gran- 
ite blocks  brought  seven  hundred  miles  from  the 
first  cataract  to  the  Delta,  adorned  with  his  name 
and  attributes  in  thoroughly  Egyptian  fashion. 

But  with  the  reign  of  the  third  Ptolemy,  a  great 
conqueror,  who  overran  all  Asia,  begins  the  long 
series  of  Ptolemaic  temples,  still  extant  in  Egypt, 
which  are  distinctly  not  Greek,  but  Egyptian. 

It  is  usual  to  speak  of  the  marriage  of  Greek  and 
Egyptian  civilisation,  and  of  the  genius  of  the 
Ptolemies  in  producing  this  fusion.  I  confess  I  can  see 
little  of  the  kind.     As  to  Alexandria,  very  few  things 


EGYPT  75 

have  been  done  in  the  way  of  excavation,  and  not 
a  single  old  secular  building  of  the  early  Ptolemaic  age 
survives;  but  we  may  be  certain  that  everything  they 
were  proud  of  in  the  royal  quarter  of  Alexandria  was 
as  purely  G'reek  as  they  knew  how  to  build  it.  No 
statues  of  Egyptian  gods  and  hieroglyphic  ornaments 
could  find  a  place  in  these  buildings.  On  the  other 
hand,  go  into  the  country,  and  examine  the  great 
temples  which  the  later  Ptolemies  (from  the  third  on) 
built  at  Esneh,  Edfu,  Denderah,  and  Thebes,1  and 
you  will  find  them  so  thoroughly  Egyptian  that  until 
the  hieroglyphics  were  deciphered,  only  one  man, 
Letronne,  ever  suspected  that  they  could  be  the 
work  of  Greek-speaking  kings.  The  figures  of  the 
kings,  the  ornaments,  the  gods  worshipped — all  is 
purely  Egyptian.  The  same  may  be  said  of  the 
smaller  specimens  of  art  gathered  from  various 
places  into  the  Cairene  Museum.  I  went  to  Egypt 
to  satisfy  myself  upon  this  point,  and  to  study  for 
myself  what  the  marriage  or  combination  of  Greek 
and  Egyptian  art  might  be.  It  was  surprising  how 
scarce  such  combinations  were,  though  they  do  exist, 
especially  in  grotesque  figurines,  and  probably  did 
exist  in  furniture  and  household  decorations. 

You  need  not  tell  me  that  two  separate  schools  of 
art  can  not  or  will  not  combine.     It  may  be  wrong  or 

1  There  seems  to  be  a  solitary  exception  of  a  portal  at  Luxor, 
on  which  the  third  Ptolemy  is  represented  in  something  like  a 
Greek  costume.  I  have  looked  at  it  carefully,  and  can  see  but 
faint  traces  of  anything  not  Egyptian  in  the  dress.  We  have  also 
found  Egyptian  work  in  the  Egyptian  Alexandria,  viz.,  in  Rnkotis. 


76  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

ugly  to  do  it,  but  it  can  be  done  and  has  been 
done,  as,  for  example,  when  our  seventeenth- century 
people  combined  Gothic  and  classical  features  in 
architecture,  and  made  ugly  buildings;  or  when 
the  Sicilians  about  Palermo  combined  Gothic  build- 
ing with  Saracen  ornament,  and  produced  very 
beautiful  results.  This  kind  of  thing  did  not  take 
place  in  Egypt.  The  Greek  towns  were  distinct, 
the  Greeks  lived  with  the  Egyptians  under  separate 
laws,  and  so  their  public  buildings  and  their  art  were 
distinct.  The  whole  of  Egyptian  society  was  settled 
upon  principles  totally  different  from  those  of  Mace- 
donia and  Greece,  and  it  was  only  gradually  that 
•'  even  the  strange  features  of  Egyptian  life  were  inter- 
fered with  by  the  kings'  decrees.  The  great  manu- 
script even  of  the  ninth  Ptolemy,  published  by  Gren- 
fell  and  Hunt,1  gives  special  direction  for  suits  between 
natives,  between  Greeks,  and  between  Greeks  and 
natives.  There  were  native  courts  and  judges,  with 
Egyptian  as  their  language,  but  the  natives  were 
encouraged  to  come  into  the  Greek  courts.  What 
was  really  fused  was  Macedonian  and  Greek,  nay 
even  Persian  and  Greek,  among  the  soldiers' 
settlements. 

And  not  only  did  the  Macedonians  and  Greeks 

<£     not  amalgamate  with  the  natives,  but  gradually  the 

patient    fellahs  of  that  day,  led  by  their  priests — 

an  old  and  wealthy  organisation  as  strong  as  the 

1  Tebtunis  Papyri,  pp.  17  ff. 


EGYPT  77 

Catholic  church  in  Spain  or  in  Ireland — began  to 
resist  the  oppression  exercised  upon  them  by  the 
fourth  and  fifth  Ptolemies,  and  presently  there  rose 
up  Mahdis,  who  promised  them  deliverance  from 
the  strangers  and  a  restoration  of  their  old  national 
monarchy.  We  know  that  there  were  several  insur- 
rections,1 put  down  with  trouble  and  difficulty,  and 
that  the  kings  were  obliged  to  bribe  the  national 
priesthood  with  presents  and  privileges  to  declare 
publicly  that  the  Ptolemy  was  the  real  god  and  king. 
For  if  all  the  Hellenistic  monarchs  were  inclined  to 
assume  the  attributes  and  dignities  of  divinities,  the 
Ptolemies,  above  all,  ruled  in  a  country  where  for 
centuries  the  kings  had  been  systematically  deified. 
The  declarations  of  the  priests,  therefore,  were  really 
a  declaration  of  policy,  though  they  seemed  to  be 
mere  politenesses  and  flatteries. 

We  have  now  two  famous  texts  of  these  decrees, 
the  Stone  of  San  and  the  Rosetta  stone,  of  which 
you  will  find  the  full  texts  and  translations  in  my 
Empire  0}  the  Ptolemies. 

In  the  end  the  monarchy  became  so  completely 
Egyptian,  especially  after  the  ninth  Ptolemy 
(Physcon)  had  let  loose  the  soldiery  upon  the  insur- 
gent Greeks  of  Alexandria,  that  when  the  Romans 
came  to  deal  with  Egypt  they  found  a  strong  and 
stubborn  national  resistance,  based  on  loyalty  to  the 

1  They  are  spoken  of  in  the  papyri  as  rapaxa-i,  and  were 
always  onsets  of  natives  against  the  settlers. 


78  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

Ptolemaic  dynasty.  But  it  was  the  Ptolemies  who 
became  Egyptian,  not  the  Egyptians  who  became 
Hellenistic.  Such,  then,  was  the  internal  policy  of 
this  remarkable  kingdom. 

What,  you  will  desire  to  know,  was  the  foreign 
policy  which  marked  the  course  of  this  Egyptian 
history?  It  is  an  equally  interesting,  but  a  more 
complicated,  subject. 

The  kingdom  of  Egypt  was  one  of  the  three  great 
divisions  of  Alexander's  empire,  Macedonia  and 
Syria  being  the  other  two.  Each  of  the  three  was 
perpetually  striving  to  obtain  preponderance  partly 
by  aggrandisement  or  conquest,  partly  by  weakening 
its  opponents  through  insurrections  fomented  among 
those  opponents'  subjects,  and  partly  by  securing 
the  influence  of  a  number  of  Greek  city-states  estab- 
lished around  the  Levant.  For  these  had  extended 
their  local  independence  into  something  like  a  little 
kingdom  by  confederations,  and  by  their  naval  and 
commercial  resources.  Of  these  Rhodes  and  Byzan- 
tium were  the  chief.  The  position  of  Egypt  between 
Syria  and  Macedonia  was  that  of  a  smaller  kingdom, 
relatively  richer,  and  with  a  safe  and  central  position, 
opposed  to  neighbours  who  were  on  land  decidedly  its 
military  superiors,  but  were  checked  by  its  naval 
resources  and  its  unlimited  power  of  hiring  merce- 
naries. Thus  Egypt  always  kept  the  ambition  of 
Macedon  in  check  by  sending  money,  and  some- 
times ships,  to  the  Peloponnesus  and  to  Athens,  and 


EGYPT  79 

so  threatening  the  coasts.  Nay,  for  a  time  Egypt 
held  coast  cities  even  in  Thrace. 

The  conflict  with  Syria  was  longer  and  more 
serious,  and  was  the  continuation  of  a  duel  which 
is  perhaps  the  most  protracted  known  in  history. 
Since  the  dawn  of  civilisation,  when  the  two  great 
alluvial  river  basins  of  the  Tigris- Euphrates  and  Nile 
rose  into  wealth  and  then  into  culture,  the  conquest 
of  each  was  always  the  great  ambition  of  the  other. 
It  is  for  this  reason  that  the  history  of  Palestine  is  a 
world-history.  That  country  was  the  highroad 
from  one  to  the  other,  and  whether  it  was  Shishak 
or  Necho  who  came  up  from  Egypt,  or  Assurbanipal 
or  Nebuchadnezzar  who  came  from  Mesopotamia, 
the  inhabitants  of  Palestine  suffered  the  fate  of 
being  on  the  great  thoroughfare. 

In  the  days  of  Hellenism,  when  every  king  desired 
to  be  regarded  a  member  of  the  civilisation  which 
lay  around  the  ^Egean,  the  Mesopotamian  power 
moved  its  capital  to  Antioch,  and  so  the  great  old 
struggle  is  now  called  the  struggle  of  Syria  and  Egypt. 
In  the  days  of  the  first  Ptolemy  the  conflict  was 
doubtful.  He  made  conquests  in  Palestine,  and 
lost  them  again,  and  it  has  been  observed  that  it 
was  as  easy  to  hold  Egypt  by  way  of  defence,  as  it 
was  difficult  to  enlarge  it  by  conquest. 

The  second  Ptolemy  was  a  man  of  peace  and  of 
policy,  who  did  perhaps  more  than  his  successors 
in  conciliating  the  Jews  and  making  them  friends  of 


80  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

Egypt  rather  than  of  Syria.  There  is  little  doubt 
in  my  mind  that  it  was  he  who  first  promoted  the 
translation  of  the  Hebrew  and  of  other  Scriptures 
into  Greek,  though  I  do  not  subscribe  to  all  the  fables 
with  which  the  so-called  letter  of  Aristeas  adorns 
this  momentous  policy.  I  will  add,  by  way  of 
digression,  that  by  far  the  greatest  contribution  of 
Alexandrian  prose  to  the  great  literature  of  the 
world  is  this  very  translation  of  the  Old  Testament, 
entitled  the  Septuagint,  which  has  preserved  for  us 
a  text  centuries  older  than  any  of  the  Hebrew  copies 
known  to  exist/  We  have,  of  course,  in  our  recent 
discoveries  found  endless  documents  written  in  the 
Greek  current  in  Egypt.  The  earliest,  which  I  had 
the  good  fortune  to  publish,  are  in  very  sound  and 
grammatical  Greek.  The  rest  show  a  somewhat 
rapid  degeneration,  according  as  the  Greek  idiom  of 
Plato  fell  into  the  hands  of  uneducated  people  of 
hybrid  descent. 

The  third  Ptolemy  was  a  great  conqueror,  who 
dismembered  for  a  moment  the  whole  empire  of 
Syria,  conquered  Antioch,  held  its  seaport  Seleucia 
with  an  Egyptian  garrison,  and  then  made  a  prog- 
ress into  the  East  second  only  to  that  of  Alexander. 
This  great  triumph  of  Egyptian  arms  is  not  only  cele- 
brated in  the  Canopus  inscription  (San)  already  men- 
tioned, but  was  commemorated  on  a  marble  throne 
at  Adule  far  down  on  the  Red  Sea  which  the  monk 
Cosmas  luckily  copied,  and  so  the  text  has  reached  us. 


EGYPT  81 

I  found,  moreover,  in  the  Petrie  papyri  fragments  of 
the  despatch  sent  by  the  king,  announcing  the  sur- 
render of  Seleucia  and  Antioch  without  a  struggle.1 
The  king  had  also  built  a  small  temple — a  purely 
Egyptian  temple — at  Esneh,  on  which  he  had  told  all 
his  history,  and  this  temple  was  standing  up  to  the 
time  when  Champollion  and  Rosellini  were  just  deci- 
phering the  inscriptions.  But  they  had  such  infinite 
materials  before  them  that  they  did  not  copy  these 
texts,  and  since  then  the  whole  building  was  destroyed 
to  make  a  sugar  factory,  which  now  exhales  its  hid- 
eous black  smoke  from  a  gaunt  chimney  into  the 
pure  and  pellucid  atmosphere  of  the  Nile.  Such  are 
the  accidents  by  which  precious  history  is  lost. 

The  fourth  and  fifth  Ptolemies  were  a  lamentable 
instance  of  decay  in  a  great  family.  The  former, 
said  by  our  historians  to  be  a  mere  debauchee,  cer- 
tainly maintained  himself  after  the  great  victory  of 
Raphia  over  Syria,  and  died  without  seeing  his  con- 
trol of  the  iEgean  islands  diminished.  But  the  consist- 
ent evidence  against  him  is  too  strong  to  be  set  aside. 
The  gradual  discontent  of  the  Egyptians  broke  into 
insurrection,  which  endangered  the  first  years  of 
his  successor,  who  was  yet  a  child ;  and  there  is  no 
doubt  that  the  energetic  Syrian  (Antiochus  III)  would 
now  have  captured  Egypt,  just  as  his  son  Antiochus 
Epiphanes  would  have  done,  but  for  the  interference 
of  the  Romans.     So  the  tables  were  turned,  and  in 

1  Pet.  Pap.,  II,  xlix. 


82  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

the  latter  days  Syria,  with  its  active  and  mature 
rulers,  was  more  than  a  match  for  the  infants  who 
succeeded  to  the  Egyptian  throne.  However,  these 
royal  houses  were  also  connected  by  marriage.  It 
was  an  able  and  worthy  princess  of  the  Syrian  house, 
married  to  the  youthful  fifth  Ptolemy,  and  mother 
of  his  two  successors,  who  brought  the  famous  name 
of  Cleopatra  into  Egyptian  history.  Till  that  time 
(about  200  B.  C.)  they  had  all  been  Arsinoe  or 
Berenice. 

These  later  kings,  though  living  at  Alexandria 
as  their  capital,  though  patronising  Greek  letters, 
and  posing  as  Hellenistic  kings,  had  fallen  under  the 
influence  of  the  national  reaction,  and  all  built  great 
temples  wherein  they  appeared  as  the  darlings  of 
the  Egyptian  gods,  as  themselves  Egyptian  gods, 
with  Pshent  and  Urceus,  with  the  emblems  of  life, 
and  surrounded  by  hawk-headed,  dog-headed, 
eagle-headed  monsters,  such  as  were  commonly 
portrayed  in  Egyptian  theology. 

With  the  seventh  and  ninth  Ptolemies  the  reaction 
goes  even  farther.  It  is  with  Philometor  that  we 
find  Jews  coming  to  high  official  positions  and 
beginning  to  make  themselves  felt  as  politicians; 
and  presently  the  strong  Egyptian  policy  of  Physcon, 
and  consequent  flight  of  the  learned  men  from  the 
Museum,  gave  Greek  influence  a  shock  from  which  it 
never  recovered.  The  ninth  Ptolemy  even  employed 
an  Egyptian  to  govern  Cyprus — an  unheard-of  thing 


EGYPT  83 

in  earlier  days.  When  the  Romans  came  to  deal 
with  the  people  of  Egypt,  they  found  it  a  strange 
and  essentially  oriental  country,  which  they  never 
could  understand  or  control  after  the  manner  of  the 
really  Hellenistic  kingdoms. 

In  the  first  place,  they  did  not  conquer  Egypt 
in  a  campaign  as  they  did  Syria  and  Macedonia, 
but  it  fell  gradually,  and  partly  by  the  solicitation 
or  bequest  of  its  own  princes,  under  their  sway. 
There  had  been  old  commercial  relations  of  a  friendly 
kind  between  Rome  and  Egypt.  As  far  back  as 
the  second  Ptolemy,  and  in  the  first  Punic  war, 
there  had  been  embassies  from  Alexandria  to  Rome, 
and  vice  versa,  and  important  trade  relations  had 
been  established.  It  was  owing  to  these  that 
Puteoli  (Pozzuoli)  was  made  a  free  port  for  Egyptian 
ships,  and  it  was  for  centuries  the  great  mart  for 
foreign  trade,  just  as  Genoa  now  is  for  all  Italy. 
Thus,  the  elegancies  of  Alexandrian  household 
furniture  and  decoration  spread,  not  only  to  Pompeii 
and  Herculaneum,  but  even  to  Roman  palaces,  and 
the  worship  of  Isis,  long  since  adopted  from  Egypt 
by  the  Greeks,  became  naturalised  in  Italian  cities. 
Such  was  the  fusion  of  creeds  and  customs  produced 
by  the  spirit  of  Hellenism.  In  the  succeeding  great 
wars — the  second  Punic  war  with  Hannibal,  the 
Macedonian  wars,  and  the  conquest  of  Syria — 
Egypt  had  been  prudently  neutral.  Hence  on  two 
occasions,  when  the  Egyptians  appealed  to  Rome 


84  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

to  save  them  from  the  attacks  of  the  Seleucids,  first 
of  Antiochus  the  Great,  and  then  of  Antiochus  IV, 
the  great  republic  intervened  and  saved  the  royal 
house.  It  was  on  the  second  of  these  occasions 
that  Popilius  Laenas  drew  the  famous  circle  with 
his  vine  stick  around  the  Syrian  king,  and  com- 
pelled him  to  decide  on  the  spot  for  peace  or  war 
with  Rome. 

In  spite  of  all  these  friendly  relations,  and  the 
gradual  subjection  of  Egypt  to  Rome,  the  land  was 
always,  as  I  have  said,  strange,  and  the  emperors 
made  special  arrangements  for  its  government. 
Into  these  I  cannot  possibly  here  enter,  but  I  merely 
wish  to  point  out  how  different  were  the  relations 
between  Rome  and  Egypt  and  the  relations  of  Rome 
and  Syria,  of  which  I  shall  speak  in  my  next  discourse. 
While  you  still  find  splendid  Hellenistic  temples 
and  colonnades  built  at  Baalbec,  Palmyra,  Gerasa, 
and  other  sites  in  the  old  kingdom  of  Syria,  even  the 
latest  temples  built  or  restored  in  Egypt  by  Roman 
emperors  down  to  Decius  are  strictly  Egyptian,  with 
their  lotus-flower  capitals,  their  hieroglyphic  inscrip- 
tions, and  with  that  peculiar  colouring  so  distinctive 
in  Egyptian  art. 

It  is  perhaps  idle  to  consider  whether  a  different 
policy  on  the  part  of  the  Ptolemies  would  have 
produced  a  different  result.  Certain  it  is  that  they 
failed  to  Hellenize  the  country,  at  least  the  inner 
country,  and  that  every  succeeding  generation  saw 


EGYPT  85 

a  sharper  return  to  the  old  ways  and  habits  of  the 
original  race.  I  repeat  this,  though  recent  years 
have  shown  us  not  only  that  they  founded  one 
Greek  city,  Ptolemais  in  upper  Egypt,  but  that 
they  settled  in  the  Fayyum  a  large  number  of  their 
Hellenic  soldiers,  so  as  to  have  there  a  colony  speak- 
ing and  writing  good  Greek,  and  reading  good 
Greek  literature.  But  there  is  ample  evidence 
in  the  papyri  to  show  that,  though  intermarriage  with 
the  natives  frequently  occurred,  these  people  were 
never  amalgamated  with  them,  but  lived  under  laws 
differing  from  the  old  code  of  the  country,  which 
was  accepted  by  the  Ptolemies  in  the  native  courts. 
The  contrast  of  this  province  of  Alexander's 
empire  to  his  Macedonian  home  is  very  striking. 
While  Macedonia  was  raised  by  a  few  great  kings 
from  obscurity  to  splendour,  and  with  the  Roman 
conquest  sank  again  into  deeper  obscurity  forever, 
the  Macedonian  dynasty  founded  in  Egypt  was  a 
mere  episode  in  the  immense  history  of  that  country, 
and  only  meant  that  that  wonderful,  patient,  eternal 
race  had  for  three  centuries  submitted  to  new  masters. 
They  had  done  so  many  times  before,  and  nearly 
all  their  great  kings  had  been  foreigners ;  they  were  to 
do  so  many  times  again.  And  so  the  importance 
of  Egypt  did  not  disappear  at  the  fall  of  its  royal 
house  with  the  famous  Cleopatra.  We  can  see  that 
not  only  the  ideas  of  the  great  Alexander,  but  the 
administration  of  the  Ptolemaic  court  of  Alexandria, 


86  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

were  constantly  before  the  mind  of  Augustus  when 
he  framed  the  constitution  of  the  Roman  empire. 
We  have  Egypt  prominent  again  in  early  Christian 
times  for  its  monks  and  its  controversies,  and  remem- 
ber, monks  were  known  in  Egypt  centuries  before 
Christianity.  Then  it  becomes  brilliant  under  the 
Saracens,  when  they  founded  Cairo  with  the  ruins 
of  Memphis.  And  so  on  to  our  own  day,  when 
the  "Egyptian  question"  is  ever  before  us,  and 
admits  of  no  final  solution;  or,  rather,  it  is  a 
question  eternally  being  solved  by  the  conquerors 
of  the  world,  from  Nebuchadnezzar  to  Napoleon; 
and  still  it  remains  a  great  highway  for  commerce 
and  for  conquest,  from  the  dawn  of  history  to  the 
present  day,  from  King  Menes  to  Lord  Kitchener. 

I  should  perhaps  add  something  upon  the  relations 
of  Egypt  with  Greece  proper  and  with  Rhodes 
during  the  period  with  which  I  am  particularly 
concerned.  You  must  remember  that  the  enormous 
wealth  of  Egypt,  and  the  fact  that  the  native  popula- 
tion there  was  disarmed,  made  it  the  favourite  field 
for  mercenary  soldiers.  Mercenary  service  was  as 
fashionable  then  among  Greeks  as  it  was  in  the 
seventeenth  century  throughout  Europe;  even  Spar- 
tan kings  thought  it  not  beneath  their  dignity  to  take 
service  of  this  kind,  and  there  were  always  many 
thousand  Greeks  pursuing  this  very  mischievous 
and  deteriorating  profession  in  Egypt.  These 
armies  were  usually  commanded  by  ^Etolians  or  Ar- 


EGYPT  87 

cadians,  and  we  know  that  these  captains  amassed 
great  fortunes,  and  at  times  even  endangered  the 
monarchy  by  the  insolence  of  their  power,  and  by 
their  waste  of  public  money. 

There  was  another  class  of  Greeks  who  also 
looked  to  Egypt  as  their  paymaster — the  artist  class. 
Pictures  and  statues  were  constantly  being  bought 
and  sent  there.  Aratus  of  Sicyon  was  a  sort  of  agent 
for  the  king  of  Egypt,  and  used  his  dealing  in  art  as 
a  pretext  for  dealing  in  politics.  The  famous  tomb 
of  Sidon,1  which  commemorates  the  victories  of 
Alexander,  is  almost  certainly  the  work  of  Greek 
artists  in  the  pay  of  the  Ptolemies ;  for  the  king  of 
Sidon  was  high  admiral  under  the  first  Ptolemy. 
It  was  for  him  or  some  of  his  companions  who  had 
fought  under  the  conqueror,  that  this  splendid 
monument  was  prepared. 

It  was  this  superiority  in  money  over  Macedon 
which  made  Egypt  always  so  popular  in  Greece, 
so  that  Aratus  and  his  league  regarded  the  Ptolemy 
as  their  support  and  protector  against  the  Antigonid. 
It  was  with  subsidies  of  money  that  Egypt  kept  up  the 
agitation  against  Macedonia. 

There  was  only  one  class  whom  the  Ptolemies 
were  most  anxious  to  settle  in  Alexandria,  in  order 
to  increase  the  glory  of  their  university,  and  in  this 
they  failed.  The  philosophers  always  regarded 
Athens  as  their  proper  home,  and  no  offers  of  money 

1  Now  in  the  museum  of  Constantinople. 


88  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

would  induce  such  men  as  Zeno,  the  great  founder 
of  the  Stoics,  to  settle  in  Egypt.  Other  celebrated 
men,  who  were  invited  and  entertained  there, 
returned  as  soon  as  they  could,  and  left  the  wealth, 
luxury,  and  turbulence  of  Alexandria  for  the  "Aca- 
demic shades"  of  Attica.  It  was  not  till  centuries 
had  elapsed  that  the  mystic  visions  of  the  East  were 
reconciled  to  the  dialectics  of  Plato  in  Alexandria, 
and  produced  the  latest  bloom  of  Greek  philosophy 
in  the  hybrid  system  of  Plotinus. 

It  is  most  melancholy,  and  very  curious,  that  we 
have  not  a  single  picture  of  social  and  literary  life  at 
Alexandria  all  through  its  great  period.  What  would 
we  not  now  give  for  a  letter  from  Cicero  on  such  a 
topic  ?  But  such  men  either  did  not  visit  Egypt,  or  if 
they  did,  like  Strabo,  they  tell  us  nothing  that  we  want 
to  know.  Dion  Chrysostom,  in  his  oration  to  the  Al- 
exandrians, rather  attacks  their  vices  than  describes 
their  ordinary  life.  The  great  scene  in  Polybius  of 
the  accession  of  Ptolemy  V,  and  the  murder  of  the 
favourites  of  his  father,  is  indeed  a  vivid  picture,  but 
it  is  a  picture  of  Alexandria  mad,  not  of  Alexandria 
sane.  There  are  a  few  stray  anecdotes  of  the  jeal- 
ousies and  squabbles  of  the  learned  at  the  Museum; 
there  is  the  famous  scene  of  Theocritus'  Adoniazusa, 
in  which  two  women  go  to  the  feast  of  Adonis,  but 
this  latter,  if  I  mistake  not,  was  copied  from  Sophron, 
and  may  possibly  be  really  Syracusan,  not  Alexan- 
drian, in  colour.     There  are  many  bald  statements 


EGYPT  89 

that  the  town  was  splendid;  there  is  the  wonder  of 
the  hero  in  a  Greek  novel,  who  finds  at  night  the 
sun  "  distributed  in  small  change  "  by  the  lamps  in 
the  streets.  But  all  these  things  touch  only  the  out- 
side, and  only  touch  it.  We  must  wait  for  some  new 
papyrus  to  reveal  to  us  what  many  men  praise  or 
blame,  but  nobody  describes  with  intelligent  insight. 


SYRIA 


THE  SELEUCID  DYNASTY 

i.  Seleucus  I 312-281 

2.  Antiochus  I  (Sotcr) 281-262 

3.  Antiochus  II  (Theos) 260-246 

4.  Seleucus  II  (Kallinikos)       ....  246-227 

5.  Seleucus  III  (Soter) 227-223 

6.  Antiochus  III  (the  Great)    -  222-187 

7.  Seleucus  IV  (Philopator)          ....  187-176 

8.  Antiochus  IV  (Epiphanes)  -  175-165 

9.  Demetrius  (Soter) 165-150 

10.  Alexander  Balas 150-145 

Interregnum 

Antiochus  Sidetes 138-129 

The  rest  is  confusion. 


LECTURE  IV 
SYRIA 

In  treating  so  large  a  subject  in  a  single  lecture  I 
must  avoid  all  small  details,  and  above  all  perplex- 
ing you  with  the  various  Antiochuses  and  Seleucuses 
who  make  up  the  pedigree  of  the  Syrian  royal  house 
— a  pedigree  by  no  means  so  interesting  as  those  of 
the  other  two  kingdoms,  for  history  has  preserved 
to  us  nothing  worth  mention  save  of  two,  Antiochus 
III  and  IV;  the  former  the  king  who  warred  with  the 
Romans  and  was  defeated  at  Magnesia  (190  B.  C), 
the  latter  (Epiphanes)  his  elder  son,  who  succeeded 
his  younger  brother,  and  who  is  famous  not  only 
for  the  circle  of  Popilius  Lamas,  but  for  his  perse- 
cution of  the  Jews,  and  the  prominent  place  he  thus 
occupies  in  the  book  of  Daniel.  But  if  the  kings  of 
Syria  are  obscure,  their  kingdom  is  by  far  the  most 
important  and  interesting  in  the  Hellenistic  world 
from  many  points  of  view. 

I  have  already  told  you  that  the  two  great  strug- 
gles in  which  Macedon  was  now  engaged  were  that 
with  the  northern  barbarians  and  that  with  the  over- 
cultivated  Greeks.  Egypt  had  only  internal  enemies 
to  fear,  and,  though  often  struggling  for  the  pos- 
session of  Cyprus  and  Cyrene,  was  secure  from 
invasion  or  dismemberment.     It  was  the  deep  sever- 

93 


94  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

ance  of  the  native  population  from  all  that  was  Greek 
which  ultimately  drew  away  that  kingdom  from  the 
rest  of  Alexander's  empire,  and  so  demoralised  the 
ruling  class  that  Ptolemaic  Egypt  succumbed  to 
Rome  from  the  mere  internal  decay  of  its  rulers. 

All  the  conflicts  which  Syria  had  to  endure  were 
at  the  same  time  like  and  unlike  those  of  her  rivals. 
The  very  name  Syria  is  a  sort  of  absurdity,  seeing 
that  the  empire  founded  by  Seleucus  had  Babylon 
for  its  natural  centre,  and  included  the  "upper 
provinces,"  Parthia,  Bactria,  Ariana,  and  indeed 
part  of  India,  till  the  first  great  war  of  Seleucus  with 
Sandracottus  determined  that  Hellenism  was  not 
to  include  the  valley  of  the  Indus.  But  quite  apart 
from  these  remote  Asiatic  provinces  or  kingdoms, 
the  so-called  kingdom  of  Syria  included  or  claimed 
Mesopotamia,  Persia,  Media,  most  of  Asia  Minor, 
Ccele- Syria,  and  Palestine,  so  that  we  have  here, 
not  a  definite  conquering  race  like  the  Macedonians 
in  their  own  land,  or  a  still  more  definite  conquered 
race  like  the  Egyptians  in  their  own  land,  but  a 
heterogeneous  conglomerate  of  peoples,  held  together 
by  a  Macedonian  satrap  and  his  small  garrison. 

It  is  true  that  most  of  these  regions  had  long  been 
accustomed  to  obeying,  more  or  less  loyally,  a 
sovereign  residing  at  Babylon  or  Susa  or  Persepolis, 
so  that  they  were  not  shocked  at  a  king  of  a  strange 
race  whom  they  seldom  saw.  Indeed,  it  shows  how 
secure  the  Seleucids   felt   on   this   point  that  they 


SYRIA  95 

settled  themselves,  not  in  the  midst  of  their  vast  king- 
dom, but  at  Antioch.  This  policy  was  adopted, 
even  before  the  first  Seleucus,  by  Antigonus,  the 
first  of  Alexander's  generals  who  held  this  group  of 
provinces  till  Babylon  was  seized  by  Seleucus  in 
312  B.  C. 

Why  was  this  particular  situation  chosen  first  by 
Antigonus  for  his  capital  Antigoneia,  then  by  Se- 
leucus for  his  capital  Antiocheia,  only  a  few  miles 
farther  down  the  Orontes  ? 

In  the  first  place,  Antioch  was  in  the  very  thor- 
oughfare from  the  old  and  well-known  crossing  of 
the  Euphrates  to  reach  the  Mediterranean.  There 
are  deserts  separating  all  Palestine  and  Syria  from 
Mesopotamia,  and  only  in  this  particular  place  is 
the  transit  both  short  and  easily  practicable.  Hence 
from  this  inner  angle  of  the  Mediterranean  to  Thap- 
sus  or  Zeugma  on  the  Euphrates  there  has  always 
been  one  of  the  highways  of  men.  It  was  necessary, 
above  all  things,  to  hold  this  route  now,  for  the  new 
kingdom  was  to  be  Greek  or  Hellenistic — European, 
if  you  like — and  not  oriental,  and  was  to  draw  its 
official  language,  its  soldiery,  its  whole  culture,  so 
far  as  possible,  from  the  West. 

So  Seleucus  and  his  descendants  declared  them- 
selves as  kings  upon  the  Mediterranean  with  large 
inner  provinces — Asia,  in  fact — to  feed  and  support 
them,  just  as  the  Ptolemies  were  kings  of  Alexandria, 
with  Egypt  and  the  Red  Sea  and  Libya — Africa,  in 
fact — to  supply  them. 


96  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

As  regards  the  particular  site,  I  see  curious  sug- 
gestions, both  of  likeness  and  of  contrast,  with  the 
other  most  notable  cities  of  the  Greek  world — Athens 
and  Alexandria.  Of  course,  Alexandria  was  the  great 
new  thing,  but  the  Syrian  port  was  not  at  the  mouth 
of  its  river,  for  this  obvious  reason  that  the  Orontes 
below  Antioch  was  the  main  drain  of  a  great  city, 
bringing  all  the  pollutions  of  men  into  a  tideless  sea. 
Hence  Seleucia,  the  fortified  port,  was  placed  about 
five  miles  north  of  the  river  mouth.  The  history 
of  Antioch  is  unfortunately  known  to  us  only  in 
stray  moments,  most  of  them  moments  of  disaster 
or  humiliation.  We  know  that  it  owed  a  great  deal 
of  its  splendour  to  the  two  principal  Seleucids,  Anti- 
ochus  III  and  IV,  who  built  new  quarters,  and  did 
all  in  their  power  to  magnify  and  beautify  this  city. 
The  suburb  Daphne  was  from  this  time  on  perhaps 
the  most  famous  resort  of  pleasure-seekers  in  the 
world,  so  that  this  Antioch  even  came  to  be  called 
"Antioch  near  Daphne,"  to  distinguish  it  from  its 
homonyms  in  Asia  Minor  and  elsewhere. 

Having  now  considered  the  capital,  we  may  pro- 
ceed to  consider  the  provinces;  for  though  this  capital 
was  so  splendid,  and  though  we  know  that  the  early 
Seleucids  put  some  store  on  literature  and  science, 
yet  Antioch  was  not  an  art  centre,  but  a  centre  of 
pleasure.  Under  Antiochus  Epiphanes  we  hear  of 
the  splendid  processions  and  feasts  which  rivalled 
the  great  mummeries  of  Alexandria. 


SYRIA  97 

But  as  regards  Syria  itself,  Ccele- Syria,  and 
northern  Palestine,  we  may  safely  assert  that  no 
outlying  country  in  Alexander's  empire  was  ever  so 
thoroughly  Hellenized.  We  know  this  by  many 
Macedonian  names  of  towns  and  the  renaming  of 
countries;  we  know  that  Greek  was  spoken  com- 
monly all  through  this  region,  and  when  we  come 
to  consider  the  ruins  of  great  cities  founded  then  or 
refounded  under  Roman  rule,  we  find  them  not 
oriental  or  foreign,  but  strictly  Hellenistic  —  or 
Roman-Greek,  as  it  is  vulgarly  called.  Baalbec 
and  Palmyra,  Gerasa  and  the  Decapolis,  represent 
Hellenistic  culture,  and  direct  imitation  of  Antioch. 

There  we  find  the  Syrian  population  thoroughly 
loyal  to  the  Seleucids,  and  no  revolution  ever  seems 
to  flourish  there.  We  may  say  almost  the  same  of 
Mesopotamia,  where  the  first  Seleucus  had  long 
reigned,  and  where  before  him  Alexander  the  Great 
had  made  a  great  impression.  There  was,  indeed, 
under  Antiochus  III,  or  rather  shortly  after  his  suc- 
cession when  he  was  still  but  a  boy,  an  insurrection 
under  Molon  and  Alexander  in  Media  and  Persia, 
who  easily  defeated  the  generals  he  sent  against  them, 
and  appeared  a  most  dangerous  opposition  to  the  new 
king.  But  as  soon  as  he  went  in  person  against  them, 
their  whole  force  melted  away,  for,  says  Polybius, 
their  soldiers  thought  it  "foul  scorn"  to  fight  against 
their  hereditary  king.  Thus  we  may  say  that  on 
this  side  of  the  second  great  desert,  which  severed 


98  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

the  various  parts  of  this  ill- cemented  kingdom — I 
mean  west  of  the  great  desert  of  Persia — the  oriental 
inhabitants,  whether  Aryan  or  Semitic,  were  quite 
loyal.  Seleucia  on  the  Tigris  was  their  capital — 
now  the  great  successor  of  Nineveh  and  Babylon. 

But  let  us  look  farther  east  and  north. 

The  first  limitation  of  Alexander's  empire  came 
from  the  region  of  India,  where  Chandragupta  (San- 
dracottus)  made  himself  a  great  oriental  kingdom 
which  was  essentially  non-Hellenistic.  Even  here, 
however,  a  knowledge  of  what  the  Macedonians  had 
done  produced  its  effects.  There  was  always,  we  may 
be  sure,  a  Macedonian  agent  or  minister  at  the  court 
of  Chandragupta,  and  we  are  quite  sure,  from  the 
inscriptions  of  Acoka,  his  successor,  who  adopted 
Buddhism,  that  Buddhist  missionaries  were  sent 
to  preach  their  doctrine  to  all  the  Hellenistic  kings 
of  the  West.  We  have  no  detail  of  their  number  or 
of  their  success,  but  when  you  consider  that  they 
must  have  preached  in  Syria  two  centuries  before 
Christ,  the  strange  likenesses  in  the  story  of  the  birth 
and  life  of  Buddha  to  that  of  the  life  of  Christ  as- 
sume a  new  and  deep  interest. 

We  are  told  that  Seleucus  made  peace  with 
the  Indian  king  on  the  basis  of  ceding  provinces 
and  taking  an  Indian  wife,  while  Chandragupta 
gave  him  that  enormous  park  of  elephants  where- 
with he  crushed  his  great  rival,  Antigonus,  at  Ipsus 
(301  B.  C). 


SYRIA  99 

It  was  not  till  more  than  half  a  century  later 
(about  247  B.  C.)  that  the  next  great  revolt  took 
place  in  the  East.  It  was  from  that  date  that  the 
Parthian  Arsakids  dated  the  rise  of  their  sovereignty. 
These  people,  as  you  know,  became  gradually 
stronger  and  stronger,  and  though  subdued  or  kept 
in  check  by  Antiochus  the  Great,  they  were  never 
reunited  to  the  Hellenistic  kingdom  of  Syria,  and 
later  on  they  became  the  heart  of  the  oriental  oppo- 
sition to  Roman  extension. 

Yet  how  deeply  Greek  ideas  and  culture  here 
penetrated  we  know  from  the  story  of  the  death  of 
Crassus.  A  strolling  company  of  Greek  players  were 
performing  the  Baccha  at  court  when  the  news  came 
in  of  the  Roman  defeat,  and  the  raging  Bacchante 
came  on  the  stage  with  the  actual  head  of  the  great 
adversary.  But  these  Parthians  were  blocked  out 
from  Hellenism  and  so  was  the  still  more  remote 
province  of  the  empire  Bactria  (Balkh),  where  we 
should  hardly  have  suspected  that  any  Greek  influ- 
ences remained,  were  it  not  that  the  beautiful  coins, 
and  the  names  of  their  kings  upon  these  coins,  show 
that  they  assumed  Greek  titles  and  copied  the  coinage 
of  the  Hellenistic  empires. 

Thus  then  you  see  two  great  facts:  (1)  the  gradual 
breaking  off  of  eastern  provinces  from  the  Seleucid 
empire,  which  was  ill-cemented  in  many  ways,  and 
moreover  severed  by  two  gigantic  deserts;  and  (2)  the 
revolting  provinces  or  kingdoms,  though  distinctly 


ioo  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

oriental  in  the  main,  were  modified  considerably  by 
the  influence  of  Alexander's  conquest.  If  it  be  true 
that  this  fusion  of  people  brought  Buddhist  teaching 
into  Galilee,  who  can  estimate  its  vast  significance  ? 

Let  us  now  turn  to  Asia  Minor,  the  other  ex- 
tremity of  the  vast  kingdom  of  Seleucus.  Here  the 
power  which  asserted  itself  as  a  separate  kingdom, 
and  had  a  great  effect  upon  the  politics  and  the  art 
of  the  world,  was  the  city  and  afterward  the  kingdom 
of  Pergamum.  Originally  the  seat,  not  of  govern- 
ment, but  of  treasure,  its  strong  position  made  it 
the  natural  spot  for  a  resolute  governor  (Philetaerus) 
to  assert  his  independence,  and  when  the  greater  king- 
doms were  disturbed,  King  Lysimachus  of  Thrace 
warring  with  Syria  for  the  rule  in  Asia  Minor, 
the  first  satrap  steered  his  way  between  the  contend- 
ing parties.  His  greatest  successor,  the  first  Attalus, 
from  whom  the  whole  dynasty  is  called  Attalid,  ruled 
long  and  brilliantly,  having  not  only  defeated  all 
the  attempts  of  the  Seleucids,  but  having  earned 
the  gratitude  of  all  Asia  Minor  by  a  great  victory 
over  the  Galatians,  who  were  both  terrifying  and 
plundering  all  Asia.  During  a  reign  of  forty-five 
years  he  consolidated  the  wealth  and  position  of  Per- 
gamum so  as  to  make  it  something  distinctive  in  the 
history  of  Hellenism. 

A  careful  study  of  the  relations  of  the  Pergamene 
kings  to  their  city  and  people  disclose  to  me  clearly 
the  peculiar  character  of  the  Hellenistic  sovereignties 


SYRIA  101 

so  popular  in  that  age  of  the  world.  Pergamum  was 
a  regular  Greek  city,  with  its  assembly,  its  council, 
its  annual  officers,  its  right  of  treaty  with  other  free 
states  apparently  untouched.  The  first  Attalid 
never  pretended  to  be  king  over  them,  but  was 
merely  an  officer  of  a  distant  prince,  keeping  treasure 
for  him  in  the  fortress,  and  commanding  a  garrison 
there.  Presently  he  asserts  his  independence,  and 
shows  it  by  declaring  the  independence  of  Pergamum 
as  a  city-state.  Hence  he  is  hailed  as  the  "benefac- 
tor" of  the  state,  presently  as  the  "founder"  of  its 
liberties,  and  its  "defender."  Even  when  he  as- 
sumes the  title  of  king,  it  is  an  abstract  title,  not  the 
King  of  Pergamum.  He  keeps  armies  and  conquers 
outlying  territory,  but  he  never  interferes,  except  by 
way  of  advice,  with  the  deliberations  of  the  city.  Of 
course,  his  advice  is  that  of  a  superior,  with  power 
to  enforce  it,  but  theoretically  he  stands  outside  the 
constitution  as  a  powerful  and  ever-present  friend. 
The  whole  conception  seems  to  us  a  strange  hypoc- 
risy, which  deceived  no  one;  yet  how  jealously  did 
the  Emperor  Augustus  copy  this  very  policy ! 

I  thought  it  right  to  enter  upon  this  digression 
because  my  sketch  of  the  Hellenistic  world  would 
not  only  be  incomplete,  which  it  must  be,  but  false, 
which  I  hope  it  will  not  be,  if  you  did  not  hear  some- 
thing about  these  second-rate  states,  which  were 
always  striving  to  keep  the  balance  of  power  among 
their  formidable  neighbours. 


102  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

Of  course,  there  was  a  great  contrast  between  the 
eastern  and  the  western  revolt  against  Syria.  The 
eastern  were  national,  the  western  political;  for 
Syria,  or  rather  the  kingdom  of  Antioch,  affected 
Hellenism  thoroughly,  as  much  as  Pergamum  or 
Byzantium.  But  the  restless  nature  of  the  Asiatic 
Greeks,  and  their  love  of  local  liberties,  still  more 
their  fancy  for  the  nobler  title  of  "free  cities,"  made 
them  bad  subjects  in  the  sense  that  Greeks  have 
always  been  bad  subjects  of  any  power. 

I  have  left,  however,  for  the  last  in  the  series  of 
revolts  far  the  most  interesting  and  important — 
that  of  the  Jews,  resulting  in  a  national  dynasty  and 
a  consolidation  of  a  distinct  national  type. 

Let  me  review  for  a  moment  the  history  of  the 
Jews  from  the  Babylonian  conquest  down  to  this 
famous  struggle.  When  they  had  returned  from 
their  captivity  and  rebuilt  their  temple,  it  was  natural 
that  the  many  Jews  who  had  not  come  back,  from 
various  motives,  should  nevertheless  look  with  sen- 
timental pride  to  their  old  religious  capital  and 
regard  it  as  a  sort  of  spiritual  centre.  This  was  the 
famous  diaspora,  of  which  we  hear  so  much,  and 
which  gradually  came  to  support  the  temple  by  send- 
ing yearly  offerings,  like  the  Peter's  pence  sent  from 
Ireland  and  other  countries  to  Rome.  These  for- 
eign Jews  were  in  many  respects  more  devout  than 
the  Palestine  people,  especially  when  the  favour  of 
Alexander  brought  Hellenism  into  good  repute 
among  the  latter. 


SYRIA  103 

We  find  the  educated  classes  gradually  dividing 
themselves  into  a  worldly,  cultivated,  cosmopolitan 
party,  which  thought  it  enough  to  believe  the  letter 
of  the  five  books  of  Moses,  and  adopt  free-thinking 
along  with  Greek  culture  beyond  it ;  and  the  stricter 
people,  who  with  Ezra  had  given  deeper  meaning 
and  development  to  their  faith,  had  adopted  the 
Prophets  and  the  fuller  interpretation  of  the  Law, 
and  above  all  were  exclusive  as  to  all  foreign  culture. 
You  will  have  recognised  in  the  former  the  aristo- 
crats and  people  of  dry  Mosaic  orthodoxy,  the 
Sadducees;  in  the  latter,  the  Pharisees.  During  the 
first  century  of  Hellenism  the  influences  of  both 
Egypt  and  Syria  were  such  that  the  Sadducees 
had  their  own  way  in  Jerusalem.  We  are  told  by 
Josephus  that  Greek  games  and  exercises  were  com- 
ing into  fashion,  that  the  Jewish  youths  were  assum- 
ing the  ephebic  dress,  and  that  everything  seemed 
to  portend  a  rapid  Hellenization  of  this  clever  and 
practical  race.  With  the  decay  of  the  Egyptian 
royal  house,  and .  the  rise  of  Antiochus  the  Great, 
Palestine  passed  permanently  out  of  Egyptian  hands, 
and  became  annexed  to  Syria,  so  that  henceforth  it 
is  to  Antioch  they  look  as  their  capital,  and  no  longer 
to  Alexandria.  It  is,  however,  most  characteristic 
of  how  far  the  Jewish  domestication  in  Egypt  had 
gone,  that  they  proposed  to  the  seventh  Ptolemy,  and 
carried  out,  the  scheme  of  establishing  an  imitation 
temple  with  its  worship  near  Heliopolis,  so  as  to 


104  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

save  the  trouble  and  expense  of  their  many  pilgrim- 
ages to  Jerusalem,  now  the  province  of  another 
kingdom.  The  practice,  however,  of  both  Ptolemies 
and  Seleucids  had  been  to  require  of  the  Jewish 
high-priest,  who  was  practically  their  satrap,  a 
definite  yearly  tribute,  and  for  the  rest  to  allow  the 
Jews  to  abide  by  their  own  customs  and  laws.  All 
ambitious  Jews  learned  Greek,  and  went  to  study  man- 
ners, and  spend  money,  at  Antioch  or  Alexandria,  and 
there  seemed  every  prospect  that  gradually  Palestine 
would  follow  the  example  of  Syria,  and  conform  to 
the  habits  of  the  many  Greek  cities  settled  along  the 
coast,  and  in  groups  at  the  upper  course  of  the 
Jordan.  The  literature  which  remains  to  us  shows 
clearly  this  progressive  influence  of  Hellenism. 

But  there  came  a  crisis  when  one  madman  was 
the  instrument  of  Providence  in  staying  all  this 
natural  development  and  in  restoring  to  its  pristine 
preciseness  and  vigour  the  definite  and  now  indelible 
nationality  of  the  Jews.  When  the  Romans  came 
to  know  them,  there  is  not  a  word  of  what  Josephus 
tells  regarding  their  Hellenistic  tendencies.  The 
crisis  was  the  reign  of  Antiochus  IV,  the  Antiochus 
Epiphanes  of  history,  the  "abomination  of  desola- 
tion" in  the  prophet  Daniel,  whose  persecutions 
roused  the  national  resistance,  and  established  the 
Maccabees  on  the  throne  of  Jewish  Palestine — all 
these  things  you  will  find  told  and  estimated  in  my 
Greek  Life  and  Thought  from  Alexander  to  the  Roman 
Conquest. 


SYRIA  105 

And  now  that  we  have  gone  through  in  brief 
detail  the  principal  features  of  the  kingdoms  of 
Macedonia,  Egypt,  and  Syria,  as  part  of  Alexander's 
Hellenistic  empire,  I  think  I  shall  best  occupy  our 
remaining  time  with  some  remarks  upon  the  general 
features  of  Hellenistic  life,  in  which  I  shall  resume 
and  repeat  some  of  the  points  to  which  I  have 
already  called  your  passing  attention. 


GENERAL   REFLECTIONS  ON 
HELLENISM 


LECTURE  V 

GENERAL  REFLECTIONS  ON  HELLENISM 

If  we  consider  in  its  large  features  what  the 
early  Hellenistic  period  has  done  for  us  in  literature, 
we  may  divide  its  action  into  the  care  and  preserva- 
tion of  Hellenic  masterpieces,  and  the  production 
of  works  of  its  own.  As  regards  the  former,  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  the  creation  of  the  great  cosmo- 
politan library  at  Alexandria,  and  the  great  trade  in 
books  which  came  thence,  were  the  greatest  acts  of 
protection  ever  done  for  the  greatest  literature  the 
world  has  seen.  And  not  only  were  all  the  master- 
pieces of  the  Golden  Age  sought  out  and  catalogued, 
but  the  chief  librarian  made  it  his  business  to  publish 
critical  studies  on  the  purity  of  the  texts,  and  to  see 
that  the  Alexandrian  text  represented  the  best  and 
soundest  tradition.  Recent  discoveries  on  papyri, 
commencing  with  the  scrap  I  found  in  the  Petrie 
papyri,  show,  e.  g.,  that  the  current  texts  of  Homer 
were  very  loose  and  various,  so  that  the  critics  of 
Alexandria,  especially  the  famous  Aristarchus,  had 
much  to  do  in  pruning,  and  in  rejecting  unauthorised 
additions  and  repetitions.  The  Homer  we  now  have 
is  that  purified  edition.  What  we  now  read  is  prob- 
ably shorter  by  one-sixth  than  the  pre-Alcxandrine 
texts.     As  regards  the  lyric  and  tragic  poets,  we  may 

109 


no  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

be  sure  the  same  care  was  exercised,  though  the  varia- 
tions and  additions  and  corruptions  which  occurred 
in  the  texts  of  the  widely  diffused  and  much-recited 
Homer  could  hardly  occur  in  the  early  lyric  poets, 
where  the  very  strict  metre  preserved  the  poet's  words 
and  made  the  interpolation  of  stray  lines  gener- 
ally impossible.  It  is  a  credible  tradition  that  the 
second  Ptolemy  borrowed  from  Athens  the  original 
stage  copies  of  the  great  tragedians  on  the  huge 
deposit  of  one  hundred  talents  of  silver,  and  that 
he  abandoned  the  money  and  secured  the  originals, 
sending  back  copies  to  the  city.  So  there  was  col- 
lected at  this  wonderful  library  all  that  was  rare 
and  precious,  ordered  and  catalogued  by  competent 
scholars.  I  go  a  step  farther,  and  say  that,  though 
we  have  no  explicit  record  telling  us  the  fact,  there 
must  have  been  some  regular  permission  to  copy 
books  in  the  library,  and,  multiplying  them  by  slave 
hands,  to  disperse  them  by  way  of  trade  all  over  the 
Greek-speaking  world.  Let  me  cite  to  you  one  piece 
of  evidence  which  I  think  conclusive.  We  have 
now  got  to  know  one  Greek-speaKing  district — an 
outlying  and  remote  district  of  Egypt — the  Fayyum. 
By  the  researches  first  of  Mr.  Petrie,  then  of  Messrs. 
Grenfell  and  Hunt,  we  have  unearthed  in  the  walls 
of  coffins,  in  rubbish  heaps,  or  even  laid  beside  the 
dead,  during  a  period  not  merely  post-Christian 
or  Roman,  but  reaching  back  to  the  second  Ptol- 
emy, all  manner   of    fragments  of  writing,  which 


GENERAL  REFLECTIONS  ON  HELLENISM   in 

show  us  that  not  only  the  great  masters — Homer, 
Pindar,  Euripides,  Demosthenes,  Menander — were 
household  books,  but  all  manner  of  the  more  out- 
of-the-way  authors — the  Contest  o]  Homer  and 
Hesiod,  the  more  difficult  lyric  poets,  works  on 
metric  and  on  chronology — all  had  filtered  into  this 
outlying  province,  and  had  become  part  of  the 
people's  education.  If  these  things  happened  in 
the  Fayyum,  how  much  more  easily  would  the 
export  of  books  take  place  directly  from  Alexandria 
to  all  the  old  Hellenic  coasts  ? 

I  say,  then,  that  not  merely  for  the  preservation, 
but  for  the  diffusion,  of  Hellenic  literature,  the  work 
of  Alexandria  was  a  permanent  education  to  the 
whole  Greek-speaking  world;  and  we  know  that  in 
due  time  Pergamum  began  to  do  similar  work.  The 
very  words  "paper"  and  "parchment"  are  the  echo 
of  "papyrus "  and  "  Pergamene,"  thus  perpetuating  to 
modern  Europe  a  record  of  the  benefits  of  Hellenism. 

But  men  who  devote  themselves  to  preserving 
books  are  not  •  the  men  likely  to  produce  books, 
unless  it  be  books  of  learning;  and  of  such  there  were 
plenty.  The  Greek  notes  we  call  scholia,  preserved 
in  some  manuscripts  of  our  classical  texts,  show  us 
the  care  and  skill  with  which  the  Alexandrian  schol- 
ars published  explanations  and  commentaries  upon 
the  great  masters.1 

1  There  was  found  among  the  Petrie  papyri  (and  since  lost)  a  short  letter 
asking  for  the  loan  of  notes  upon  the  Iliad.  The  scraps  of  commentary  we 
have  found  show  us  the  practical  nature  of  these  notes.  There  was  also  a 
received  system  of  critical  signs,  which  have  survived  in  two  or  three  texts. 


ii2  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

But  returning  to  literature,  there  is  no  doubt  that 
the  most  fashionable  poets  and  prose  writers  of 
Alexandria — the  Robert  Louis  Stevensons  and  the 
Rudyard  Kiplings  of  their  day — were  not  of  the  level 
of  the  Golden  Age.  Yet  withal,  as  I  already  have 
told  you,  we  have  from  Alexandria  Theocritus,  and  we 
have  the  love-novel.1  I  will  here  add  a  word  upon  two 
more  of  these  poets,  whom  I  had  then  passed  by. 
The  first  is  Aratus,  who  was  indeed  a  Hellenistic, 
but  not  an  Alexandrian,  poet,  whose  didactic  work 
on  the  astronomy  of  use  for  navigation,  and  on  the 
signs  of  the  weather  of  use  for  farming,  has  survived 
to  us  complete.  The  poem  in  itself  is  calm  and 
prosy,  nor  would  it  command  any  modern  inter- 
est, had  not  one  of  the  greatest  artists  the  world 
has  ever  seen — the  poet  Virgil — used  it  as  the  model 
for  the  signs  of  weather  in  his  exquisite  Georgics. 
He  has  translated  faithfully  and  closely  enough,  but 
by  his  marvellous  alchemy  has  transformed  the 
Greek  silver  into  Roman  gold. 

Nor  is  this  the  only  debt  that  Virgil,  and  through 
him  the  whole  world  of  European  literature,  owes  to 
the  Hellenism  of  Alexandria.  We  still  possess  the 
Argonautics  of  Apollonius  the  Rhodian — a  pedant- 
poet  of  the  same  generation.  In  the  midst  of  pages 
of  tedious  prolixity,  which  have  forever  damned  the 
popularity  of  the  work,  occurs  the  great  episode  of  the 
meeting  and  love  at  first  sight  of  Medea  and  Jason. 

1  Above,  p.  70 


GENERAL  REFLECTIONS  ON  HELLENISM   113 

The  treatment  of  this  world-wide,  but  never  world- 
worn,  theme  is  so  wholly  fresh,  so  wholly  un-Hellenic, 
that  it  requires  no  subtle  criticism  to  see  in  it  the 
broad  light  of  the  oriental  love-novel  which  had  first 
dawned  in  the  East  upon  the  companions  of 
Alexander.  It  is  no  longer  the  physical,  but  the 
sentimental,  side  of  that  passion  which  interests  the 
poet  and  his  readers.  The  actual  marriage  of  the 
lovers  is  but  an  episode,  in  which  the  surrounding 
anxieties  and  the  unhappy  omens  take  the  foremost 
place.  Whether  Virgil,  in  painting  the  love  of  Dido 
for  ^Eneas,  had  any  closer  model  to  copy  we  may 
never  know.  But  it  is  now  a  commonplace  of  criti- 
cism that  the  episode  has  been  inspired  by  the 
spirit,  if  not  the  letter,  of  Apollonius.  There  are 
the  same  psychology,  the  same  portrait  of  the  all- 
absorbing  sentiment,  the  same  chastity  of  language 
where  a  Hellenic  poet  would  have  been  naturalistic. 
The  world  has  neglected  this  third  book  of  the  Argo- 
nautics  as  if  it  were  a  poem  of  no  importance,  and 
it  is  not  for  me  to  do  more  than  record  my  dissent. 
But  even  were  my  judgment  astray,  surely  the  poet 
who  attuned  the  delicate  instrument  on  which 
Virgil  rendered  his  pathetic  melody  has  done  no 
ordinary  service  to  mankind.1 

Time  fails  me  to  speak  of  the  other  Alexandrians 
from  whom  lesser  Roman  poets — Tibullus,  Proper- 

1  I  refer  the  reader  for  further  details  to  my  History  of  Greek  Literature, 
where  there  is  a  chapter  on  Theocritus  and  Apollonius. 


ii4  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

tius,  Catullus — drew  whatever  quasi-inspiration  they 
possessed.  The  most  remarkable  poem  of  the  best 
of  these — Catullus — is  the  Atys.  We  have  no  direct 
clue  or  indication  that  it  is  borrowed  from  the  Greek. 
And  yet  there  is  no  man  who  has  studied  the  obliga- 
tions of  Latin  to  Greek  poetry  who  is  not  convinced 
that  it  must  have  been  derived  from  some  Hellenistic 
original. 

If  you  will  learn  fully  what  that  age  of  Hel- 
lenism produced,  look  at  the  huge  catalogues  of 
Susemihl  {Liter atur  der  Alexandrinerzeit)  and  Vol.  V 
of  Croiset's  Litterature  Grecque.  And  yet,  astonishing 
to  relate,  both  these  books  omit  all  mention  of  our 
greatest  and  best  specimen  of  Syrian  Greek — I  mean 
the  books  of  the  New  Testament.  Here,  if  any- 
where, you  will  see  the  force  of  Hellenism  in  inter- 
penetrating and  moulding  the  culture  of  a  very  foreign, 
a  very  stubborn,  race.  I  shall  not  dwell  on  Paul  of 
Tarsus,  for  though  born  a  Jew  and  always  in  spirit  a 
Jew,  he  had  enjoyed  the  education  of  a  great  centre  of 
Greek  learning — the  schools  of  Tarsus.  But  consider 
the  language  of  the  synoptic  gospels.  Here  we  have 
the  ordinary  Greek  of  Palestine  and  Syria  written 
by  men  who  seem  to  have  laid  little  claim  to  be  liter- 
ary artists.  They  write  a  dialect  simple  and  rude  in 
comparison  with  Attic  Greek;  they  use  forms  which 
shock  the  purists  who  examine  for  Cambridge 
scholarships.  But  did  any  men  ever  tell .  a  great 
story  with  more  simplicity,  with  more  directness, 


GENERAL  REFLECTIONS  ON  HELLENISM   115 

with  more  power  ?  Take,  for  example,  the  opening 
chapter  of  St.  Luke's  gospel.  Can  any  artist  from 
Theocritus  down  show  us  an  idyll  of  more  perfect 
grace?  Take  the  narrative  of  the  Passion.  Who 
has  ever  told  great  sorrow  with  simpler  pathos, 
with  more  touching  modesty,  with  more  native 
dignity?  Believe  me  against  all  the  pedants  of  the 
world,  the  dialect  that  tells  such  a  story  in  such  a 
way  is  no  poor  language,  but  the  outcome  of  a  great 
and  a  fruitful  intellectual  education.  Such  was  the 
education  that  Hellenism  brought  to  the  Syrian  world. 
Let  us  now  turn  to  art,  and  ask  what  was  the 
influence  of  Hellenism  upon  the  nations  which  it 
drew  within  its  mighty  influence.  Of  the  recognised 
fine  arts  the  two  most  subtle  and  subjective  are  lost 
to  us — music  and  painting.  The  hand  of  time  has 
been  against  us,  and  we  have  only  stray  fragments 
which  give  us  not  even  adequate  suggestions.  The 
wall-painting  of  Pompeii,  and  in  a  few  of  the  Pala- 
tine rooms  at  Rome,  is  not  the  work  of  artists,  but 
of  operatives,  and  ■  is  as  defective  in  drawing  as  are 
most  of  the  clay  figurines  of  similar  date  from  Tana- 
gra  and  elsewhere.  The  remains  of  Greek  melodies, 
of  which  we  understand  the  notation,  are  not  only  to 
us  exceedingly  ugly,  but  so  queer  and  strange  that 
no  musician  can  attempt  to  restore  a  single  bar, 
where  there  is  a  gap  or  fracture  in  the  inscription. 
But  let  us  take  up  sculpture  and  architecture.  And 
first  of  all  let  us  reduce  to  its  proper  value  the  vulgar 


n6  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

phrase  which  assigns  to  Greek  art  a  golden  and  a 
silver  age.  The  life  of  Alexander  was  supposed  to 
be  the  dividing  line.  Lysippus  the  sculptor,  who 
had  the  privilege  of  reproducing  the  king's  form, 
was  the  last  of  the  real  masters.  Among  the  many 
falsehoods  I  was  taught  about  Greek  art  when  I 
was  young,  that  was  one  of  the  most  flagrant.  Go 
now  to  the  Louvre  in  Paris,  and  walk  through  that 
famous  collection  of  Greek  and  Graeco-Roman 
sculpture.  Two  masterpieces  will  forever  stand  out 
from  the  rest  in  your  memory.  The  first  is  the  Nike 
of  Samothrace,  that  figure  of  victory  that  once  stood 
on  a  marble  prow  heralding  the  success  of  King 
Demetrius  the  Besieger  with  her  trumpet.  The 
other,  in  the  place  of  honour  in  its  gallery,  surrounded 
by  a  crowd  whose  comments  admiration  is  wont  to 
hush,  is  the  Venus  of  Melos.  Both  are  works  of  the 
so-called  silver  age — one  of  them  as  late  as  the 
Roman  domination  of  Greece.  Need  I  add  that 
at  Rome  the  very  inferior  Apollo  Belvedere  and 
the  Laocoon,  truly  works  of  a  silver  age,  yet  have 
fascinated  centuries  of  men  ever  since  the  Renais- 
sance ? 

In  recent  years  we  have  much  fresh  evidence  of 
the  diffusion  of  this  noble  art  into  the  East.  The 
great  glory  of  the  museum  at  Constantinople  is  the 
famous  tomb  of  Sidon,  which  so  amazed  its  dis- 
coverers that  they  called  it  the  tomb  of  Alexander 
the  Great.     That,  of  course,  was  absurd.     But  as 


GENERAL  REFLECTIONS  ON  HELLENISM    117 

to  its  age  there  is  no  doubt.  It  commemorates  in  its 
noble  reliefs  the  conflicts  of  Macedonians,  Greeks, 
and  Persians,  and  was  evidently  intended  to  honour 
the  tomb  of  some  companion  of  Alexander,  probably 
the  Sidonian  king  Philocles,  who  was  high  admiral 
to  the  first  Ptolemy.  We  have  never  found  any 
sepulchral  monument  of  such  consummate  beauty. 

But  if  the  date  had  not  been  thus  fixed,  we  should 
have  seen  another  recurrence  of  the  controversy 
which  rages  over  every  new  masterpiece  in  marble 
or  in  bronze  which  is  recovered  from  the  earth  or  the 
sea.  Is  it  Hellenic  or  Hellenistic  ?  Is  it  of  the 
fourth  or  the  third  century  before  Christ  ?  Can  there 
be  any  better  proof  than  this,  that  Hellenism  had  not 
only  spread  a  knowledge  of,  and  a  taste  for,  great 
plastic  art  throughout  the  nearer  East,  but  that  it 
also  raised  up  no  mean  successors  to  the  great  men 
of  genius  whose  work  in  marble  and  in  bronze  has 
never  since  been  rivalled,  not  even  by  all  the  study 
and  all  the  resources  of  modern  civilisation  ? 

The  case  is  far  simpler  with  architecture.  We 
may  say  broadly  that  the  Corinthian  style  is  exclu- 
sively Hellenistic  and  Roman.  All  the  great  remains 
in  that  style,  from  the  splendours  of  the  Olympian 
temple  at  Athens  to  the  colonnades  at  Palmyra — all 
are  essentially  the  product  of  Hellenism.  Nay 
more,  the  restorations  of  old  buildings  in  that  age 
are  so  artistic  that  in  many  cases — as,  for  example, 
at   the   temple  of   Eleusis — we   are   still   in   doubt 


n8  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

whether  the  work  is  archaistic  or  archaic;  whether 
it  be  the  original  execution  of  Mnesicles,  the  con- 
temporary of  Pericles,  or  a  far  later  Hellenistic,  nay 
possibly  Roman- Greek,  restoration. 

As  regards  the  refinements  and  the  luxuries  of 
everyday  life,  we  may  confidently  assert  that  this 
age  advanced  with  great  strides.  Hellenic  and 
Macedonian  household  furniture  was  so  simple  as  to 
be  almost  rude,  and  we  can  quite  appreciate  the 
astonishment  of  Alexander  when  he  burst  in  upon 
the  splendours  of  the  Persian  court,  even  under  can- 
vas, in  the  midst  of  a  campaign.  "This  indeed," 
he  cried  when  he  saw  the  purple  and  the  plate,  "is 
dining  like  a  king !"  So  in  Egypt  the  antique  refine- 
ments of  a  civilisation  of  thousands  of  years  must 
have  impressed  the  Macedonians,  whose  life  had 
been  spent  in  rude  camps  and  campaigns,  and  we 
may  be  sure  that  all  manner  of  small  conveniences 
in  daily  life  were  added  to  the  so-called  necessities 
of  an  advancing  culture.  The  implements  of  toilet 
found  at  Pompeii  show  what  the  middle  classes  of 
Italy  had  attained  when  in  near  contact  with  Helle- 
nistic refinement. 

Recent  discoveries  have  shed  new  light  on  the 
achievements  of  Hellenism  in  pure  science  and  in 
practical  business.  The  longer  we  study  the  mathe- 
matical books  of  the  Greeks,  most  of  them  dating 
from  this  epoch,  the  more  we  are  persuaded  that 
they  knew  vastly  more  than  we  learn  from   their 


GENERAL  REFLECTIONS  ON  HELLENISM    119 

explicit  statements.  It  was  only  of  late  years  that 
Mr.  Penrose  discovered  the  delicate  and  complicated 
system  of  curves  applied  to  the  building  of  the  Par- 
thenon, which  does  not  contain  in  its  plan  a  single 
straight  line.  There  must  have  been  large  mathe- 
matical knowledge  in  the  mind  of  this  Hellenic 
Wren;  we  know  from  the  fragments  of  Pythagorean 
lore  that  the  science  of  numbers  occupied  the  deepest 
attention  of  that  early  sect.  We  know  also  that  the 
somewhat  clumsy  notation  of  quantities  in  Attic 
accounts,  which  is  very  analogous  to  the  Roman 
figures,  was  replaced  by  the  much  simpler  alphabetic 
notation,  wherein  all  the  accountants  of  the  Fayyum 
papyri  make  up  their  sums.  Historians  of  Greek 
mathematics,  in  ignorance  of  this  new  notation,  have 
said  marvellous  things  concerning  the  impossibility 
of  multiplication  and  division,  and  the  necessity  of 
using  the  primitive  abacus  with  its  counters.  We 
have  never  yet  found  a  Greek  abacus,  and  shall  not 
find  one  till  we  dig  up  an  infant  school.  The  papyri 
deal  in  very  large  and  complicated  computations 
which  range  from  the  use  of  millions  down  to  series 
of  minute  fractions,  and  though  they  do  make  mis- 
takes, their  counting  is  as  accurate  as  average  work 
of  the  present  day.  It  would  lead  us  too  far  to  give 
you  the  details  proving  these  statements.  They 
will  presently  be  published  by  my  friend,  Professor 
Smyly,  who  combines  an  exceptional  knowledge 
of  Greek  papyri  with  a  very  complete  training  in 
mathematics. 


120  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

Not  only  in  pure  science,  and  in  practical  sci- 
ence, but  in  the  whole  management  of  affairs  by 
departments,  by  a  series  of  graduated  officials,  by 
keeping  careful  minutes,  by  all  the  machinery  now 
used  in  business  houses,  and  in  state  bureaus  —  in 
all  this  the  Hellenistic  age  had  reached  quite  a  high 
level.  Need  I  add  that  banking,  the  keeping  of 
money  out  on  interest,  the  payment  of  bills  and 
draughts  on  bankers,  were  all  perfectly  understood 
and  practised  in  Greek  Egypt  two  centuries  before 
Christ  ?  If  all  this  attainment  had  not  been  lost  or 
hopelessly  blurred  in  the  Dark  Ages,  what  centuries 
of  time  would  Europe  have  saved  in  her  painful 
progress  toward  civilisation  ? 

On  the  change  in  the  political  ideals  of  the  age  I 
have  already  said  a  good  deal  in  my  discourse  on 
Xenophon.  According  as  Greek  conquests  and 
Greek  culture  spread  over  a  vast  area,  the  old  city 
constitutions  with  their  tiny  states  were  found 
wholly  inadequate.  Two  solutions  were  possible: 
either  large  confederations  or  monarchies.  The 
natural  question  for  any  American  to  ask  is  this: 
How  was  it  that  a  confederation  among  free  states 
did  not  commend  itself  universally,  as  opposed  to 
monarchy — an  idea  to  which  almost  all  the  Greeks 
had  been  for  centuries  hostile  ?  The  answer  is  very 
direct  and  simple,  and  will  come  home  with  peculiar 
force  to  those  who  have  lived  through  a  great  crisis 
in  the  history  of  these  United  States.     When  a  num- 


GENERAL  REFLECTIONS  ON  HELLENISM   121 

ber  of  independent  states  enter  a  league  or  confedera- 
tion and  enjoy  its  benefits,  has  each  one  of  them  a 
right  to  carry  on  separate  negotiations  with  foreign 
states;  or,  if  that  be  not  permitted,  has  it  a  right  to 
secede?  To  these  two  questions  the  Greeks  gave 
but  the  one  answer.  Each  contracting  state  pre- 
serves its  inherent  right  to  treat  with  any  power  it 
chooses,  and  every  such  state  has  also  the  right  to 
secede  from  its  confederation.  Even  when  states 
bound  themselves  by  promises  to  maintain  joint 
action,  all  Greek  sentiment  was  against  coercing 
disobedient  members.  It  might  be  done  by  force, 
but  it  was  never  done  as  a  matter  of  argument 
upon  the  rights  of  the  case.  This  condition  of  the 
Greek  mind  wrecked  all  confederations  in  the  long 
run  and  left  as  the  only  other  imperial  solution  the 
acquiescence  in  a  monarchy  with  sufficient  military 
force  to  keep  its  subject  cities  in  order.  From  a 
material  point  of  view,  these  monarchies  had  the 
power  to  carry  out  conquests,  and  so  open  up 
new  provinces  to  Greek  commerce  and  Greek  enter- 
prise. Moreover,  there  were  many  city-states, 
especially  in  Asia  Minor,  which  were  bordered  by 
wild  mountaineers,  or  semi-savage  tribes,  from  whom 
they  required  protection.  A  strong  monarch  could 
subdue,  or  at  least  repress,  the  raids  of  these  people, 
and  so  the  subjects  of  a  king  found  themselves  far 
safer  then  the  members  of  a  league.  These  con- 
verging reasons,  not  to  speak  of  the  brilliant  example 


122  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

set  by  Alexander  the  Great,  determined  the  Helle- 
nistic world,  still  jealous  for  the  internal  liberties  of 
every  Greek  city,  to  acquiesce  in  the  sundry  "bene- 
factors" and  "saviours,"  by  which  titles  they  justified 
to  themselves  the  submission  to  personages  who 
differed  only  in  outward  circumstances  from  the 
tyrants  that  were  the  bugbears  of  Hellenic  life. 

Yet  one  more  reflection,  and  I  conclude.  The 
brilliancy  of  city  life,  the  comforts  and  conveniences 
with  which  the  citizens  became  supplied,  the  privi- 
leges which  they  obtained,  gave  to  all  this  epoch  of 
men  a  strong  tendency  to  migrate  from  the  country 
into  the  towns.  So  it  was  that  to  live  kco/xtjSov,  in 
villages,  like  the  pagani  of  the  Romans,  came  to 
suggest  boorishness  and  want  of  refinement.  In  the 
book  of  Revelations,  which  concludes  our  New  Tes- 
tament, the  ideal  of  the  future  is  no  longer  the  Ely- 
sian  fields,  but  the  New  Jerusalem  come  down  from 
heaven,  a  city  with  walls  and  gates  and  splendid 
streets.  This,  and  not  fair  glades  and  trees  and 
streams,  was  the  conception  of  the  highest  happiness 
produced  by  average  Hellenism.  But  with  the 
change  there  was  also  a  loss  of  simplicity  and  inno- 
cence such  as  has  always  been  the  boon  and  privilege 
of  country  life,  and  this  was  felt  by  a  few  superior 
minds.  The  old  adage,  "God  made  the  country, 
but  the  devil  made  the  towns,"  is  best  of  all  illus- 
trated by  Dion  Chrysostom  in  his  famous  oration 
(VII)  About  Poverty,  which  you  will  see  fully  re- 


GENERAL  REFLECTIONS  ON  HELLENISM   123 

hearsed  in  my  forthcoming  Greek  Life  from  Polybius 
to  Plutarch;  and  so  it  came  to  pass  that  strong  and 
fresh  barbarians  from  their  wild  fields  and  forests 
were  able  to  overthrow  all  the  refined  but  effete 
town  civilisation  of  the  Graeco-Roman  empire. 


HELLENISTIC  INFLUENCES  ON 
CHRISTIANITY 


LECTURE  VI 
HELLENISTIC  INFLUENCES  ON  CHRISTIANITY 

In  these  modern  utilitarian  days,  when  it  is  put 
upon  us  to  prove  what  was  formerly  taken  for  granted 
with  regard  to  the  Greeks,  and  we  are  asked  to  show  in 
what  respects  modern  culture  is  still  indebted  to  them, 
it  may  be  well  to  make  an  excursion  for  once  into  the 
domain  of  theology,  into  that  precious  preserve  which 
is  supposed  the  peculiar  apanage  of  the  Jews.  In 
the  minds  of  modern  Christians  Hellenism  has  been 
too  often  associated  with  heathenism;  its  art  has  been 
considered  the  handmaid  of  false  gods,  and  an  im- 
pure mythology;  the  sermons  and  letters  of  St.  Paul 
have  been  understood  as  the  protest  of  a  converted 
Jew  against  the  Greek  influence  that  then  dominated 
the  world;  and  there  are  not  wanting  those  that 
point  to  the  Italian  Renaissance  to  show  that  the 
revival  of  Greek  letters  brought  with  it  a  violent 
reaction  against  the  strict  dogma  and  practice  of  the 
Christian  church.  I  will  now  therefore  inquire  what 
effects  the  contact  with  Hellenistic  thought,  religion, 
and  civilisation  had  upon  the  Christian  faith. 

You  may  have  been  taught  perhaps  that  here  the 
contact  was  somewhat  remote;  that  the  Jews,  a  dis- 
tinct nation,  notorious  for  their  hatred  of  foreigners, 

127 


128  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

developed  this  faith  by  the  teaching  of  Christ  among 
themselves,  and  that  it  was  not  till  after  a  great 
struggle  that  the  completed  Christianity  was  extended 
to  the  Gentiles.  And  you  might  quote  in  favour  of 
that  view  that  the  first  Gentile  notice  taken  of  the 
Christians — the  early  persecutions,  for  example, 
by  Nero — merely  regarded  them  as  a  peculiar  sect 
of  Jews,  adding  to  the  unsocial  and  intolerant  char- 
acter of  that  race  new  vices  peculiarly  their  own. 
The  separation  of  Jew  and  Gentile  seems  so  strong 
in  the  New  Testament  that  you  may  be  inclined 
to  doubt  any  serious  influence  from  the  Greek 
side. 

If  you  will  look  into  Josephus,  and  read  his  account 
of  Palestine  from  the  death  of  Alexander  down  to  the 
days  of  Herod  the  Great,  that  is  to  say,  for  the  two 
centuries  preceding  the  life  of  Christ — you  will  change 
that  opinion.  As  the  Jews  had  once  been  on  the 
highway  between  the  great  military  powers  of  Egypt 
and  of  Mesopotamia,  and  had  suffered  deep  influence 
from  both,  so  now  they  lay  between  Ptolemaic  Egypt 
and  the  Hellenistic  kingdom  of  Syria,  subject  to 
encroachment  from  both.  In  particular,  the  Seleucid 
kings  who  reigned  at  Antioch  had  settled  what  were 
called  free  Greek  cities  in  lower  Syria,  along  the 
course  of  the  Jordan,  and  Egypt  had  done  so  along 
the  sea;  so  that  Palestine  was  studded  with  many 
centres  of  Greek  life.  All  ambitious  young  men 
among  the  Jews  began  to  learn  Greek,  and  seek 


INFLUENCES  ON  CHRISTIANITY  129 

promotion  at  the  Syrian  or  Egyptian  courts,  where 
they  often  rose  to  high  office  and  consideration. 
And  so  there  came  to  be  formed  at  Jerusalem  a 
Hellenistic  party,  who  thought  that  the  Jews  should 
assimilate  themselves  to  the  Greeks,  in  opposition 
to  the  national  party,  led  by  the  Pharisees,  who  held 
fast,  not  only  to  the  law  of  Moses,  but  to  the  tradi- 
tions which  had  grown  up  in  the  schools,  such  as  we 
have  them  in  the  Talmud.  I  have  no  time  here  to 
follow  out  in  detail  this  conflict,  but  will  merely  point 
out  to  you  that,  close  to  the  time  of  Christ,  Herod  the 
Great  had  been  a  great  Hellenizer  of  his  subjects.  He 
had  not  only  established  a  Greek  theatre  and  amphi- 
theatre at  Jerusalem,  but  had  rebuilt  the  Jewish 
temple  magnificently  in  Greek  style,  as  he  also 
rebuilt  many  great  temples  for  the  Greeks  of  Asia 
Minor  and  the  ^Egean  islands.  With  him  stood 
that  division  of  the  Jewish  nobility,  known  as  the 
Sadducees,  who  were  ready  to  obey  the  mere  law 
of  Moses,  but  repudiated  all  the  later  developments 
of  the  Jewish  faith,  and  with  them  the  belief  in 
spirits  and  in  angels  and  in  a  future  life. 

In  this  temper  of  the  governing  class  it  is  easy  to 
see  how  great  would  be  the  influence  of  the  Greek- 
speaking  people  settled  in  Palestine.  All  the  higher 
civilisation,  all  the  art,  all  the  science,  lay  with  them. 
They  were  the  intermediaries  between  the  Jews  and 
the  rest  of  the  cultivated  world.  How  important 
this  was  to  Christianity  is  not  a  matter  of  inference, 


130  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

but  to  be  seen  clearly  from  our  Lord's  own  words, 
particularly  as  we  find  them  recorded  in  the  gospel 
of  St.  John.  Jesus  teaches,  in  the  first  place,  that  his 
religion  is  no  longer  a  national  religion,  confined  to 
a  special  people,  centred  in  a  special  shrine,  but 
intended  for  all  men  and  all  countries,  when  the 
woman  of  Samaria  puts  forth  the  antiquated  view, 
and  insists  upon  the  importance  of  her  place  of  wor- 
ship.1 

There  is  another  passage  in  the  same  direction, 
but  even  of  more  importance  and  this  again  in  the 
gospel  of  St.  John,  the  most  spiritual  but  by  far  the 
most  Hellenistic  of  our  gospels.2  Who  were  these 
Greeks?  Plainly  those  of  the  free  Greek  cities 
established  in  Palestine  and  hitherto  standing  aloof 
from  the  Jewish  religion.  What  Christ  then  meant 
to  say  was  plainly  this:  "It  is  only  when  Greeks 
come  to  acknowledge  my  gospel  that  it  will  indeed 
spread  over  the  civilised  world."  And  so  from 
the  very  beginning,  though  we  may  believe  that  in 

1  "Jesus  saith  unto  her,  Woman,  believe  me,  the  hour  cometh, 
when  neither  in  this  mountain,  nor  in  Jerusalem,  shall  ye  worship 

the  Father God  is  a  Spirit :  and  they  that  worship  him 

must  worship  in  spirit  and  truth." — John  4:21,  24. 

2  "  Now  there  were  certain  Greeks  among  those  that  went  up 
to  worship  at  the  feast:  these  therefore  came  to  Philip,  who  was 
of  Bethsaida  of  Galilee,  and  asked  him,  saying,  Sir,  we  would  see 
Jesus.  Philip  cometh  and  telleth  Andrew:  Andrew  cometh,  and 
Philip,  and  they  tell  Jesus.  And  Jesus  answereth  them,  saying, 
The  hour  is  come,  that  the  Son  of  man  should  be  glorified." — 
John  12:20-23. 


INFLUENCES  ON  CHRISTIANITY  131 

Galilee  and  among  his  intimates  our  Lord  spoke 
Aramaic,  and  though  we  know  that  some  of  his  last 
words  upon  the  cross  were  in  that  language,  yet  his 
public  teaching,  his  discussions  with  the  Pharisees, 
his  talk  with  Pontius  Pilate,  were  certainly  carried  on 
mainly  in  Greek.  I  need  not  dilate  upon  the  details 
of  a  question  you  will  find  fully  discussed  in  many 
theological  works.  It  is  not  without  significance  that 
the  author  of  the  first  gospel  was  at  the  "receipt  of 
custom,"  where  he  must  necessarily  have  used 
Greek  to  deal  with  his  Roman  masters.  And  so  we 
find  the  first  explanation  of  the  gospel  of  Christ,  not 
intrusted  to  the  simple  fishermen  who  attended  him, 
but  handed  over  to  Mark,  then  to  Matthew  and  Luke 
— more  educated  men,  who  wrote  at  second  hand, 
advised  by  the  original  witnesses;  nor  is  it  till  late 
in  the  first  century,  and  after  much  training  in  the 
Greek  world,  that  the  apostles  come  forward  and 
write  epistles,  and  these  uniformly  in  Greek. 

Meanwhile  the  propagation  of  the  gospel  to  the 
Gentiles  is  intrusted  to  Paul — a  man  versed  not  only 
in  the  Greek  language,  but  in  Greek  philosophy; 
and,  far  from  insisting  upon  the  radical  difference 
of  the  Greek  notions  of  religion  from  those  of  the 
new  Christianity,  he  is  at  pains  more  than  once  to 
tell  his  Greek  hearers  that  the  faith  he  advocates 
is  not  so  much  a  new  religion  as  an  explicit  and  clear 
revelation  of  truths  in  accordance  with  the  theology 
and  the  morality  which  the  best  of  the  Greeks  had 


i32  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

taught.  Read  the  two  passages:  Rom.  i :  16-201  and 
Acts  17 :  24~28.2  But  before  I  go  into  the  doctrine  of 
this  latter  passage,  I  must  complete  what  I  have  said 
about  the  language.  It  is  not  enough  to  say  that 
Greek  was  the  current  language  of  Christianity; 
it  may  fairly  be  said  that  it  was  the  only  language. 
Even  the  quotations  from  the  Old  Testament  were 
now  accessible  in  the  Septuagint,  and  we  know 
that  is  the  version  commonly  used  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment. There  is  no  evidence  whatever  that  any 
other  tongue  (save  Aramaic  to  certain  Jewish  audi- 
ences by  men  whose  native  speech  was  Aramaic) 

1  "For  I  am  not  ashamed  of  the  gospel:  for  it  is  the  power  of 
God  unto  salvation  to  every  one  that  believeth;  to  the  Jew  first, 
and  also  to  the  Greek.  For  therein  is  revealed  a  righteousness  of 
God  from  faith  unto  faith:  as  it  is  written,  But  the  righteous 
shall  live  by  faith.  For  the  wrath  of  God  is  revealed  from  heaven 
against  all  ungodliness  and  unrighteousness  of  men,  who  hinder 
the  truth  in  unrighteousness ;  because  that  which  is  known  of  God 
is  manifest  in  them;  for  God  manifested  it  unto  them.  For  the 
invisible  things  of  him  since  the  creation  of  the  world  are  clearly 
seen,  being  perceived  through  the  things  that  are  made,  even  his 
everlasting  power  and  divinity;  that  they  may  be  without  excuse." 

2  "The  God  that  made  the  world  and  all  things  therein,  he, 
being  Lord  of  heaven  and  earth,  dwelleth  not  in  temples  made 
with  hands;  neither  is  he  served  by  men's  hands,  as  though  he 
needed  anything,  seeing  he  himself  giveth  to  all  life,  and  breath, 
and  all  things;  and  he  made  of  one  every  nation  of  men  to  dwell 
on  all  the  face  of  the  earth,  having  determined  their  appointed 
seasons,  and  the  bounds  of  their  habitation;  that  they  should  seek 
God,  if  haply  they  might  feel  after  him  and  find  him,  though  he  is 
not  far  from  each  one  of  us:  for  in  him  we  live,  and  move,  and 
have  our  being;  as  certain  even  of  your  own  poets  have  said,  For 
we  are  also  his  offspring." 


INFLUENCES  ON  CHRISTIANITY  133 

was  used  for  at  least  a  century  after  the   foundation 
of  Christianity. 

Some  of  you  may,  however,  be  anxious  to  cry  out 
to  me :  What  about  the  gift  of  tongues  ?  What  about 
the  crowd  on  the  day  of  Pentecost  ?  Well,  you  ought 
all  to  be  familiar  with  the  important  fact  that  this 
miracle  of  speaking  in  tongues  was  intended  as  a 
manifestation  of  miraculous  power,  not  as  a  practical 
engine  for  converting  the  world.  It  is  plain  from 
the  very  narrative  in  Acts,  chap.  2,  that  the  multitude 
which  came  together,  being  "devout  men  living  at 
Jerusalem,  Jews,  out  of  every  nation  under  heaven," 
had  a  common  language,  in  which  they  communicated 
and  expressed  their  astonishment;  and  it  was  in  this 
language,  probably  Greek,  that  St.  Peter  addressed 
them  all.  He  has  no  difficulty  in  being  understood. 
When  we  further  examine  the  preaching  of  the  gospel 
according  to  the  Acts  and  Epistles,  we  are  struck  with 
the  absence  of  all  use  of  this  apparently  powerful 
engine  for  missionary  labour.  Never  do  we  hear  of  it 
being  called  into  use.  There  was  no  more  obvious, 
nay  more  crying,  need  of  using  the  gift  of  tongues, 
which  St.  Paul  says  he  possessed  in  a  very  high  de- 
gree, than  when  he  was  shipwrecked  on  the  island  of 
Malta,  and  a  venomous  serpent  fastened  upon  his 
head.  He  shook  it  off  and  felt  no  hurt.  But  the 
natives,  who  had  at  first  thought  him  a  malefactor 
pursued  by  the  vengeance  of  the  gods,  suddenly 
thought  him  some  divine  person.     Here,  then,  was 


i34  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

a  rare  opportunity  for  preaching  the  gospel  to  these 
poor  heathen.  But  no,  St.  Paul  leaves  them  in  their 
ignorance,  and  proceeds  forthwith  to  preach  to  the 
Roman  governor  of  the  island,  who  of  course  under- 
stood Greek. 

But  far  more  important,  nay,  decisive,  is  St.  Paul's 
i  Cor.,  chap.  14, T  which  therefore  needs  no  further 

'"Follow  after  love;  yet  desire  earnestly  spiritual  gifts,  but 
rather  that  ye  may  prophesy.  For  he  that  speaketh  in  a  tongue 
speaketh  not  unto  men,  but  unto  God;  for  no  man  understandeth; 
but  in  the  spirit  he  speaketh  mysteries.  But  he  that  prophesieth 
speaketh  unto  men  edification,  and  exhortation,  and  consolation. 
He  that  speaketh  in  a  tongue  edifieth  himself;  but  he  that  prophe- 
sieth edifieth  the  church.  Now  I  would  have  you  all  speak  with 
tongues,  but  rather  that  ye  should  prophesy:  and  greater  is  he 
that  prophesieth  than  he  that  speaketh  with  tongues,  except  he 
interpret,  that  the  church  may  receive  edifying.  But  now, 
brethren,  if  I  come  unto  you  speaking  with  tongues,  what  shall  I 
profit  you,  unless  I  speak  to  you  either  by  way  of  revelation,  or  of 
knowledge,  or  of  prophesying,  or  of  teaching  ?  Even  things 
without  life,  giving  a  voice,  whether  pipe  or  harp,  if  they  give  not 
a  distinction  in  the  sounds,  how  shall  it  be  known  what  is  piped 
or  harped  ?  For  if  the  trumpet  give  an  uncertain  voice,  who  shall 
prepare  himself  for  war  ?  So  also  ye,  unless  ye  utter  by  the  tongue 
speech  easy  to  be  understood,  how  shall  it  be  known  what  is 
spoken  ?  for  ye  will  be  speaking  into  the  air.  There  are,  it  may 
be,  so  many  kinds  of  voices  in  the  world,  and  no  kind  is  without 
signification.  If  then  I  know  not  the  meaning  of  the  voice,  I 
shall  be  to  him  that  speaketh  a  barbarian,  and  he  that  speaketh 
will  be  a  barbarian  unto  me.  So  also  ye,  since  ye  are  zealous  of 
spiritual  gifts,  seek  that  ye  may  abound  unto  the  edifying  of  the 
church.  Wherefore  let  him  that  speaketh  in  a  tongue  pray  that 
he  may  interpret.  For  if  I  pray  in  a  tongue,  my  spirit  prayeth, 
but  my  understanding  is  unfruitful.  What  is  it  then  ?  I  will 
pray  with  the  spirit,  and  I  will  pray  with  the  understanding  also: 


INFLUENCES  ON  CHRISTIANITY  135 

comment.  The  use  of  tongues  not  being  once 
alluded  to  as  a  missionary  engine,  I  say,  then,  Greek 
was  not  only  the  vehicle,  but  the  exclusive  vehicle, 
of  the  new  religion. 

But  why,  you  will  ask  me,  have  I  been  at  such 
pains  to  insist  upon  this  point  ?  Does  it  matter 
what  language    Christianity  adopted,    beyond   the 

I  will  sing  with  the  spirit,  and  I  will  sing  with  the  understanding 
also.  Else  if  thou  bless  with  the  spirit,  how  shall  he  that  fillcth 
the  place  of  the  unlearned  say  the  Amen  at  thy  giving  of  thanks, 
seeing  he  knoweth  not  what  thou  sayest  ?  For  thou  verily  givest 
thanks  well,  but  the  other  is  not  edified.  I  thank  God  I  speak 
with  tongues  more  than  you  all :  howbeit  in  the  church  I  had  rather 
speak  five  words  with  my  understanding,  that  I  might  instruct 
others  also,  than  ten  thousand  words  in  a  tongue. 

"Brethren,  be  not  children  in  mind:  yet  in  malice  be  ye  babes, 
but  in  mind  be  men.  In  the  law  it  is  written,  By  men  of  strange 
tongues,  and  by  the  lips  of  strangers  will  I  speak  unto  this  people; 
and  not  even  thus  will  they  hear  me,  saith  the  Lord.  Wherefore, 
tongues  are  for  a  sign,  not  to  them  that  believe,  but  to  the  unbe- 
lieving: but  prophesying  is  for  a  sign,  not  to  the  unbelieving,  but 
to  them  that  believe.  If  therefore  the  whole  church  be  assem- 
bled together  and  all  speak  with  tongues,  and  there  come  in  men 
unlearned  or  unbelieving,  will  they  not  say  that  ye  are  mad  ? 
But  if  all  prophesy,  and  there  come  in  one  unbelieving  or  unlearned, 
he  is  reproved  by  all,  he  is  judged  by  all;  the  secrets  of  his  heart  are 
made  manifest;  and  so  he  will  fall  down  on  his  face  and  worship 
God,  declaring  that  God  is  among  you  indeed. 

•'What  is  it  then,  brethren  ?  When  ye  come  together,  each  one 
hath  a  psalm,  hath  a  teaching,  hath  a  revelation,  hath  a  tongue, 
hath  an  interpretation.  Let  all  things  be  done  unto  edifying. 
If  any  man  speaketh  in  a  tongue,  let  it  be  by  two,  or  at  the  most 
three,  and  that  in  turn;  and  let  one  interpret:  but  if  there  be  no 
interpreter,  let  him  keep  silence  in  the  church;  and  let  him  speak 
to  himself,  and  to  God." 


136  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

importance  and  convenience  of  having  the  current 
language  of  the  Old  World  for  its  instrument  ?  Any 
other  person  desiring  to  spread  his  knowledge  over 
the  world  at  that  time  would  have  adopted  the  same 
means;  it  is  therefore  not  essential,  but  accidental, 
to  Christianity. 

It  seems  to  me  that  this  is  a  very  incomplete  and 
inadequate  view  of  the  importance  of  Greek  to  Chris- 
tianity, and  that  the  adoption  of  that  language  was  of 
far  deeper  import  than  that  of  mere  convenience. 

In  the  first  place,  the  learning  of  Greek  did  not 
mean  the  mere  picking  up  of  a  foreign  language 
through  servants  or  common  people.  It  always 
implied  mental  training,  the  reading  of  Homer  and 
other  classical  authors,  the  study  of  some  formal  phi- 
losophy. It  was  distinctly  an  education.  Even  in  the 
golden  days  Isocrates  tells  us  that  not  he  that  is  born, 
but  he  that  is  educated,  is  a  true  Athenian.  And  so 
whenever  in  Josephus,  in  Polybius,  in  any  author  of 
that  day,  the  knowledge  of  Greek  is  mentioned,  it  is 
coupled  with  the  attainment  of  a  certain  culture,  quite 
different  from  that  of  the  rest  of  the  world — and  not 
only  different,  but  accepted  by  nations  widely  differ- 
ing, as  the  best,  and  as  a  common,  culture.  We  talk 
now  of  European  culture,  because  English,  French, 
Germans,  and  the  rest  meet  on  common  ground,  have 
similar  intellectual  traditions,  and  use  the  same  kind 
of  arguments.  Such  was  the  Hellenistic  training  of 
that  day;  it  was  the  common  ground  on  which  Roman 


INFLUENCES  ON  CHRISTIANITY  137 

and  Jew,  Macedonian  and  Syrian,  could  meet  and 
hold  intercourse. 

Let  me  further  insist  that  this  civilisation  was  so 
perfect  that,  as  far  as  it  reached,  men  were  more 
cultivated,  in  the  strict  sense,  than  they  ever  have 
been  since.  We  have  discovered  new  forces  in 
nature;  we  have  made  new  inventions;  but  we  have 
changed  in  no  way  the  methods  of  thinking  laid 
down  by  the  Greeks.  None  of  us  has  ever  replaced 
Aristotle's  logic,  or  Euclid's  geometry,  or  the  analysis 
of  Greek  grammar,  all  of  which  were  current  in  the 
Greek  world  before  the  rise  of  Christianity.  These 
people  had  attained,  for  the  first  time  in  the  history 
of  the  human  race,  methods  of  rational  argument 
which  have  never  been  superseded.  For  which 
reason,  what  they  have  thought  out  can  hardly  ever 
become  antiquated,  save  in  small  details.  Their 
books  are  far  more  modern  than  all  the  productions 
of  Europe  of  the  Middle  Ages,  when  Greek  was 
forgotten. 

I  said  just  now  that  the  Hellenistic  world  was  more 
cultivated  in  argument  than  we  are  nowadays. 
And  if  you  think  this  is  a  strange  assertion,  examine, 
I  pray  you,  the  intellectual  aspects  of  the  epistles  of 
St.  Paul,  the  first  Christian  writer  whom  we  know 
to  have  been  thoroughly  educated  in  this  training. 
Remember  that  he  was  a  practical  teacher,  not  likely 
to  commit  the  fault  of  speaking  over  the  heads  of  his 
audience,  as  the  phrase  is.     Remember,  also,  that 


138  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

the  people  he  addressed  were  not  the  specially 
intellectual  classes,  but,  with  rare  exceptions,  the 
middle  and  lower  people.  With  these  facts  before 
you,  take  up  any  of  his  epistles  or  open  letters, 
intended  for  such  a  public,  and  tell  me  whether  you 
are  not  surprised  at  their  intellectual  calibre.  The 
arguments  are  so  subtle,  the  reasoning  so  close,  that 
the  average  man  or  woman  of  today  does  not  follow 
them  without  considerable  effort. 

It  was  my  duty  for  many  years  to  lecture  a  class  of 
theological  students  in  Trinity  College  on  the  epistle 
to  the  Romans,  so  I  can  speak  from  long  practical 
experience  in  this  matter.  I  can  tell  you  that  the 
ordinary  college  student  in  Ireland — where  men  are 
not  wanting,  I  can  assure  you,  in  intelligence — found 
it  well-nigh  impossible  to  reproduce  Paul's  arguments 
in  any  form  which  showed  that  he  had  grasped  them, 
and  very  often  these  young  men  and  I  wondered 
together  what  manner  of  audience  it  could  be  to 
which  such  instruction  seems  to  have  been  simple 
enough  for  their  practical  needs.  It  is  certainly 
now  on  the  level  of  the  highest  university  teaching 
that  we  possess.1 

1  I  think  it  right  to  observe  here  that  American  education, 
which  I  have  observed  and  discussed  in  many  places  and  with 
many  competent  people,  appears  to  me  above  all  things  deficient 
in  its  ignoring  of  common  logic  as  a  mental  training  for  every 
average  student.  Looking  back  over  forty  years'  experience  of 
teaching  in  an  old  and  successful  university,  I  think  the  logic 
which  we  make  a  compulsory  part  of  our  education  does  more 


INFLUENCES  ON  CHRISTIANITY  139 

By  reason,  therefore,  of  his  training  in  the  Greek 
schools — we  might  call  it  the  university — of  Tarsus, 
which  at  that  time  had  a  good  reputation,  you  find 
yourself  dealing,  not  with  an  Egyptian  priest,  a  Bud- 
dhist sage,  or  even  a  Hebrew  prophet,  who  spoke 
with  the  imperfect  logic  of  poetry,  substituting 
authority  and  miracle  for  argument,  but  with  a 
trained  dialectician  working  by  rational  discussion, 
and  fit  to  take  his  place  in  any  theological  school  of 
the  present  day.  Such  thinking  can  never  grow  anti- 
quated; such  culture  can  never  be  superseded.  And 
if  it  were  for  this  reason  only,  Christianity  is  fit  to 
retain  its  hold  upon  men  in  the  twentieth  century, 
and  to  withstand  many  of  the  objections  of  mod- 
ern science  and  of  new-fangled  philosophy.  Can 
you  not  imagine  with  what  promptness  Paul  would 
have  fitted  himself  for  the  controversies  of  today, 
and  taken  his  place  among  our  foremost  thinkers  ? 
There  are  not  a  few  recent  objections  that  would 
have  seemed  familiar  to  him. 

I  contend,  therefore,  that  the  peculiar  modcrnness, 
the  high  intellectual  standard,  of  Christianity  as  we 
find  it  in  the  New  Testament,  is  caused  by  its  contact 
with  Greek  culture. 

It  would  be  strange,  indeed,  if  such  contact  had 
not  also  shown  itself  in  the  form  of  Christian  doc- 
practical  good  than  anything  else  we  teach,  for  it  helps  men  and 
women  in  every  walk  of  life  to  distinguish  between  good  and  bad 
reasoning,  and  so  saves  them  from  falling  victims  to  plausible 
impostors  in  science,  in  theology,  and  in  business. 


i4o  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

trines,  in  Christian  ways  of  approaching  the  great 
mysteries  of  life.  Is  it  likely  that  the  Christian 
teachers  could  adopt  the  tongue  and  the  dialectic 
of  Plato  and  not  agree  with  him  in  the  great  intel- 
lectual and  moral  struggle  against  false  views  of  the 
world  and  false  theories  of  conduct?  Is  it  likely 
that  the  Christian  system  would  not  profit  by  the 
Attic  Moses  as  well  as  by  the  Hebrew  lawgiver  ? 

But  even  if  nothing  further  could  be  traced  to 
Greek  training,  the  reasonableness  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment, the  simplicity  of  the  writers,  is  the  feature 
which  distinguishes  our  canon  from  the  many 
spurious  additions  which  were  rejected  by  the  early 
church.  If  you  will  consult  the  apocryphal  gospels 
and  Acts,  which  I  take  to  represent  the  less  educated 
or  oriental  side  of  religion  in  those  days,  you  will 
find  them  to  deal  in  unnecessary  miracles,  to  parade 
the  abnormal  and  the  occult.  Compared  with 
these  the  books  of  the  canon  are  exceptional  in  their 
broad,  open-air,  noonday  simplicity,  and  their  desire 
to  bring  everything  to  the  test  of  fair  evidence.  This 
is  the  rationalistic  spirit  in  the  proper  and  useful 
sense. 

But  think  not  that  this  spirit  excludes  mysteries. 
Far  from  it.  Consider  for  a  moment  St.  John's  meta- 
physic — the  doctrine  of  the  Logos  proposed  at  the 
opening  of  his  gospel.  This,  so  far  as  I  know,  is  a 
purely  Hellenistic  conception,  derived  ultimately  from 
Plato — the  idea  that  the  word  expresses  the  Divine 


INFLUENCES  ON  CHRISTIANITY  141 

Reason,  which  is  incarnate  in  the  second  person  of  the 
Trinity — the  identification  of  Reason  with  its  natural 
expression,  so  that  the  necessary  utterance  of  God's 
will  is  through  the  word  of  his  personification  in  the 
flesh.  This  profound  theory  is  most  undoubtedly 
foreign  to  the  Semitic  side  of  our  religion,  perfectly 
strange  to  Pharisees  and  Sadducees,  but  imported 
from  the  Greeks. 

So  much  for  speculative  theology.  What  can 
we  find  as  regards  practical  life?  We  find  that 
among  other  systems  of  conduct  the  Greeks  had 
elaborated  one,  the  Stoic,  in  which  St.  Paul  was  edu- 
cated, which  has  so  many  points  in  common  with 
Christianity  that,  even  if  it  did  not  adopt  them  from 
the  Stoics,  we  must  recognise  that  the  truth  was 
revealed  to  the  Greeks  independently  of  the  teaching 
of  St.  Paul.  In  the  gospels  and  in  the  personal  teach- 
ing of  Christ,  there  is  but  little  which  reminds  us  of 
this  noble  but  stern  system.  When  we  come  to  Paul's 
writings,  not  only  the  thinking,  but  the  phrases,  are 
frequently  Stoic.  Thus  his  whole  sermon  at  Athens 
paints  Christianity  as  like  as  possible  to  the  creed  of 
his  Stoic  hearers.  He  even  approaches  closely  to  the 
pantheism  which  marks  that  system.  Nor  is  this 
likeness  confined  to  a  particular  sermon,  reported,  per- 
haps, not  verbally  by  St.  Luke.  There  are  so  many 
points  of  contact  between  the  most  popular  advocate 
of  Stoicism,  Seneca,  in  that  generation,  that  books 
have  been  written  arguing  that  the  Roman  sage 


142  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

must  have  been  intimate  with  the  writings  of  the 
Christian  missionary.  But  this  is  unnecessary.  Both 
were  educated  in  the  same  school,  and  had  learned 
the  same  commonplaces.  Read  the  account  in 
Cicero1  of  the  ideal  wise  man,  the  sage  in  the  moral 
sense,  as  the  Stoics  understood  it,  and  you  will 
recognise  at  once  whence  Paul  took  his  famous  pas- 
sage in  2  Cor.  6:9,  10.2 

But  before  I  analyse  this  notion  of  the  ideal  wise 
man,  let  me  point  out  to  you  some  other  Stoic 
notions,  which  coincide  most  remarkably  with  those 

1  De  Fin.,  iii,  75 :  "  Quam  gravis  vero,  quam  magnifica, 
quam  constans  conficitur  persona  sapientis!  ....  Rectius 
enim  appellabitur  rex,  quam  Tarquinius,  qui  nee  se  nee  suos 
regere  potuit;  rectius  magister  populi  quam  Sulla,  qui  trium  pesti- 
ferorum  vitiorum,  luxuriae,  avaritiae,  crudelitatis,  magister  fuit; 
rectius  dives  quam  Crassus,  qui  nisi  eguisset,  nunquam  Euphra- 
tem  nulla  belli  causa  transire  voluisset.  Recte  ejus  omnia  dicun- 
tur,  qui  scit  uti  solus  omnibus;  recte  etiam  pulcher  appellabitur, 
animi  enim  lineamenta  sunt  pulchriora,  quam  corporis;  recte 
solus  liber,  nee  dominationi  cujusquam  parens,  neque  obediens 
cupiditati;  recte  etiam  invictus,  cujus  etiam  si  corpus  constringa- 
tur,  animo  tamen  vincula  injici  nulla  possint.  Neque  expectet 
ultimum  tempus  aetatis,  ut  turn  denique  judicetur  beatusne 
fuerit,  quum  extremum  vitae  diem  morte  confecerit,  quod  ille 
unus  e  septem  sapientibus  non  sapienter  monuit.  Nam  si  beatus 
unquam  fuisset,  beatam  vitam  usque  ad  ilium  a  Cyro  exstructum 
rogum  pertulisset.  Quod  si  ita  est,  ut  neque  quisquam,  nisi  bonus 
vir,  et  omnes  boni  beati  sunt,  quid  philosophia  magis  colendum, 
aut  quid  ut  virtute  divinius  ?  " 

3  "  ....  as  unknown,  and  yet  well  known;  as  dying,  and 
behold,  we  live;  as  chastened,  and  not  killed;  as  sorrowful,  yet 
always  rejoicing;  as  poor,  yet  making  many  rich;  as  having 
nothing,  and  yet  possessing  all  things." 


INFLUENCES  ON  CHRISTIANITY  143 

of  Christendom.  First,  there  was  the  unity  of  the 
human  race,  all  ruled  by  the  same  Providence.  As  St. 
Paul  puts  it :  "there  is  no  longer  Jew  or  Gentile,  bond 
or  free,"  all  are  in  the  same  sense  servants  of  God. 
This,  as  you  know,  was  directly  contrary  to  the 
Jewish  creed  of  a  peculiar  people.  In  the  second 
place  comes  the  doctrine  of  the  dignity  of  the  individ- 
ual man,  wholly  opposed  to  all  the  notions  of  oriental 
despotism.  The  Stoic  wise  man  was  absolutely 
free,  though  the  tyrant  might  bind  him;  happy, 
though  the  tyrant  might  torture  him.  The  poorest 
slave,  the  most  complete  barbarian,  if  he  attained 
this  spiritual  emancipation,  was  more  royal  than  his 
sovereign,  more  independent  than  his  master.  And 
you  will  see  how  thoroughly  this  expresses  the  spirit 
of  the  early  Christians,  in  spite  of  all  their  humility. 
The  inestimable  value  of  each  human  soul,  which  is 
worth  more  than  all  the  material  world,  is  there  main- 
tained with  trenchant  clearness. 

This  strong  individualism  is  not  more  important 
than  the  vital  doctrine  that  human  virtue  is  active, 
and  consists  in  doing  good,  in  promoting  God's 
will  practically  in  the  world;  not,  as  many  eastern 
systems  had  preached,  in  mere  contemplation  and 
passive  resignation.  This,  as  you  know,  has  been 
always  and  now  is  the  contrast  of  eastern  and  western 
Christianity.  Even  now  the  Greek  church  has  not 
attained  the  same  ideal  of  active  piety  that  we  have; 
and  this  our  advantage  is  in  no  small  degree  owing 


144  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

to  the  spread  of  Stoic  ideas  in  the  western  empire, 
where  the  philosophers  of  that  school  came  to  hold 
the  place  almost  of  a  local  clergy,  preaching  the  vir- 
tues which  Christianity  sanctioned,  and  the  purity  of 
life  which  Christianity  enforced.1 

Still  more  striking  was  the  Stoic  theory  that  unless 
a  man  reformed  his  whole  life  by  an  ideal  principle, 
all  isolated  attempts  at  good  were  worth  nothing. 
The  fool,  as  they  called  the  unregenerate,  could  do 
nothing  good;  the  wise  or  regenerate  could  do  no 
wrong.  He  was  saved  from  sin  and  error,  and  had 
attained  perfection.  There  was  even  a  controversy 
among  the  Stoic  doctors,  and  this  three  centuries 
before  the  time  of  Christ,  whether  the  change  from 
the  spiritual  darkness  of  the  ordinary  man  to  the 
Stoic  light  was  gradual  or  must  be  sudden,  and  there 
were  told  among  them  many  cases  of  instantaneous 
conversion. 

These  doctrines,  as  you  will  have  at  once  per- 
ceived, are  not  so  much  the  doctrines  of  general 
Christianity  as  those  of  Protestantism,  and  you  know 
that  St.  Paul  has  been  often  called  the  apostle  of 
Protestantism.  This  clear  and  bold,  though  perhaps 
narrow,  view  of  justification  by  faith  only,  the  sudden 
passage  from  darkness  to  light,  the  exclusion  of  all 
attempts  at  virtue  outside  the  pale  of  this  convic- 
tion— all  has  been  inherited  by  the  modern  Protes- 
tant from  the  ancient  Stoic  far  more  directly  than 

1  This  is  admirably  set  forth  in  E.  Renan's  Marc  Aurele. 


INFLUENCES  ON  CHRISTIANITY  145 

most  men  imagine.  We  can  trace  it  historically, 
with  but  few  gaps  in  the  obscurity  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  from  the  rugged  mountains  of  Cilicia,  the 
original  home  of  Stoicism,  to  the  equally  rugged  land 
of  the  Scotch  Covenanters.  Among  the  bold 
mountaineers  of  Cilicia,  celebrated  in  their  heathen 
days  for  facing  death  instead  of  slavery,  where  whole 
city  populations  committed  suicide  when  pressed 
by  Persian,  by  Greek,  by  Roman  besiegers,  this 
congenial  doctrine  found  its  home,  till  from  Isauria, 
the  wildest  part  of  these  highlands,  came  the  Emperor 
Leo  to  sit  on  the  Byzantine  throne  and  open  his 
crusade  against  images.  It  was  this  Protestant  or 
Stoic  spirit  that  dictated  the  whole  iconoclastic  war, 
and  when  the  adherents  of  this  dynasty  were  driven 
out,  they  took  refuge  in  Wallachia  and  Moldavia, 
whence  they  passed,  or  their  spirit  passed,  into 
Moravia  and  Bohemia,  where  in  due  time  arose  John 
Huss  and  Jerome  of  Prague;  and  from  these  early 
reformers  Protestantism  spread  to  Germany,  Eng- 
land, Scotland,  and  thence  with  the  Pilgrim  fathers 
to  North  America — all  the  spirit  of  Stoicism,  so 
strong  in  Paul,  and  so  strong  in  the  Scotch  Calvinist, 
that  it  is  difficult  to  find  any  closer  spiritual  relation- 
ship asserting  itself  over  diversities  of  race  and  lan- 
guage across  wide  gulfs  of  space  and  time. 

I  know  very  well  that  all  the  special  steps  of  this 
progress  are  not  easily  proved.  But  a  long  consid- 
eration of  the  matter  has  only  confirmed  me  in  adopt- 


146  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

ing  this  hypothesis  as  the  most  reasonable  to  account 
for  the  facts.  The  spiritual  relationship  of  Stoicism 
and  Protestantism  I  think  no  candid  inquirer  will 
be  disposed  to  deny.  From  contact  with  the  Greeks, 
therefore,  Christianity  obtained  this  support,  that 
an  ideal  long  known  to  the  western  world,  the  Stoic 
ideal,  was  found  to  correspond  with  it,  so  that  the 
preaching  of  the  apostles  was  in  this  respect  not  out 
of  harmony  with  the  wants  and  the  aspirations  of  the 
higher  and  better  minds  of  that  age. 

But,  admitting  the  value  of  this  noble  and  prac- 
tical ideal,  you  may  think  that  the  tendency  toward 
scientific  precision  and  the  moral  tameness  in  the 
Greek  mind  would  militate  against  the  great  enthu- 
siasms preached  by  the  Gospel  and  countenanced  by 
the  eastern  religions.  To  the  Greek  you  will  justly 
say  the  habit  of  rational  discussion  was  everything, 
and  he  would  be  most  unlikely  to  admit  miracles, 
or  mysteries,  which  are  nevertheless  essential  to 
Christian  dogma.  This  is  to  some  extent  true;  the 
Greeks  were  essentially  rationalists;  but  you  would, 
indeed,  show  little  appreciation  of  the  genius  of  the 
race  if  you  were  satisfied  with  such  a  statement. 
I  will  not  urge  what  is  very  important — that  at 
Alexandria,  and  indeed  in  the  later  or  Hellenistic 
period  of  Greek  life,  this  rationalising  people  came 
in  contact  with  oriental  mysteries,  and  readily 
adopted,  from  these  older  creeds,  cults,  and  worships 
wherein  the  hidden  and  the  supernatural  played  the 


INFLUENCES  ON  CHRISTIANITY  147 

principal  part.  The  contact,  for  example,  of  Greece 
and  Egypt  produced  a  great  change  in  the  worship 
of  almost  all  the  Hellenistic  world — Serapis  and  Isis 
displaced  the  Hellenic  gods,  at  least  in  practice.  The 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity  was  developed  by  the  Greek. 
Christians  in  contact  with  similar  dogmas  among 
the  Egyptians.  But  all  those  influences  I  think  it 
fairer  to  attribute  to  the  people  from  whom  they 
came,  and  to  treat  them  in  that  connection.  There 
is  no  difficulty,  however,  in  showing  you  that  the 
feeling  for  mystery,  the  peculiar  instinct  in  man,  that 
religion  is  no  mere  bargain  with  the  gods,  but  some- 
thing deeper  and  more  poetical — this  feeling,  with- 
out which  we  cannot  imagine  any  saving  faith,  was 
well  known  and  thoroughly  appreciated  by  the 
Greeks,  pure  and  simple,  and  the  Greeks  of  the 
best  epoch. 

There  were,  as  most  of  you  know,  solemn  mys- 
teries celebrated  every  year  in  the  very  heart  of 
civilised  Greece,  at  Eleusis,  near  Athens,  in  which 
the  sorrows  of  the  goddess  Demeter  and  her  benevo- 
lences to  men  were  commemorated.  These  mys- 
teries, which  were  not  a  solitary  occurrence  in 
Greece,  attained  in  the  best  period  of  Greek  history 
a  wide  celebrity,  and  initiation  was  open  to  all  who 
satisfied  the  spiritual  conditions,  even  women  and 
slaves.  I  have  myself  seen  the  excavated  temple, 
where,  in  contrast  to  other  Greek  temples,  a  vast 
chamber  was  provided  for  a  great  congregation  which 


148  THE  PROGRESS  OF  HELLENISM 

met  together  to  witness  the  rites — mysterious,  awful, 
secret — whereby  man  was  raised  to  sympathy  with 
the  sorrows  of  divine  beings.  So  well,  indeed,  was  the 
secret  kept  that,  as  is  the  case  now  with  Freemasonry, 
not  one  of  the  vast  number  of  initiated  people  has 
told  us  what  he  saw  and  heard,  and  even  in  the  early 
Christian  controversies  no  renegade  from  the  faith 
of  Demeter  and  Cora  was  found  to  divulge  the 
mystery.  Nevertheless  there  are  not  wanting  many 
heartfelt  expressions  of  the  immense  spiritual  bene- 
fits to  be  obtained  by  this  exceptional  service.1 

"Much  that  is  excellent  and  divine,"  says  Cicero 
(de  Legg.,  II,  14),  "does  Athens  seem  to  me  to  have 
produced  and  added  to  our  life,  but  nothing  better 
than  these  mysteries,  by  which  we  are  formed  and 
moulded  from  a  rude  and  savage  life  into  humanity ; 
and  indeed  in  the  mysteries  we  perceive  the  real 
principles  of  life,  and  learn  not  only  to  live  happily, 
but  to  die  with  a  fairer  hope." 

How  far  these  sublime  ideas  may  reach  into 
modern  life,  with  what  vicissitudes,  under  what 
difficulties,  I  will  illustrate,  in  conclusion,  by  a 
strange  passage  in  Irish  history.  If  you  look  at  any 
mediaeval  map  of  Europe,  you  will  find  in  Ireland 
but  one  place  noted  as  of  world-wide  interest — the 
Purgatory  of  St.  Patrick  at  Lough  Derg  in  the  wilds 
of  Donegal.  It  is  a  little  rocky  island  on  this  lonely 
lake,  which  is  surrounded  with  solitary  moors,  and 

1  Rambles  and  Studies,  pp.  186  ff. 


INFLUENCES  ON  CHRISTIANITY  149 

studded  with  other  islands  deep  in  heather  and 
plumed  with  splendid  ferns.  We  first  hear  of  this 
place  of  pilgrimage  from  a  knight  who  went  there 
about  1200  A.  D.,  and  with  the  help  of  a  monk 
described  his  experiences — his  being  laid  in  a  cave 
to  sleep,  where  he  saw  the  horrors  and  wonders  of 
the  next  world,  and  scarce  escaped  with  his  life  from 
this  terrible  ordeal.  His  account  is  so  closely 
similar  to  what  we  hear  of  the  Eleusian  mysteries 
that  there  can  hardly  be  doubt  that  the  one  came, 
by  some  obscure  maze  of  tradition,  to  influence  the 
other.  This  narrative  took  hold  of  all  Europe,  and 
especially,  I  think,  of  Dante,  when  composing  his 
Purgatorio;  it  brought  hundreds  of  pilgrims  through 
danger  and  discomfort  to  remote  Ireland,  and 
offered  the  wild  natives  such  opportunities  for  extor- 
tion that  Pope  Alexander  VI  sent  a  legate  to  visit 
it  about  1490,  who  describes  his  adventures  in  an 
extant  letter  to  Isabella  d'Este,  and  it  was  suppressed 
by  the  pope  in  1494.  Nevertheless  it  has  survived 
not  only  this,  but  the  fury  of  the  Protestant  Reformers, 
who  in  1628  devastated  the  shrine,  destroyed  the 
small  artificial  cave,  and  threw  the  carved  stones 
into  the  lake.  For  even  now,  in  July,  four  thousand 
pilgrims  wander  to  this  lonely  retreat  and  endeavour 
to  carry  out  the  penance  and  vigils  once  suggested 
by  the  Eleusinian  mysteries,  but  now  modified  by 
the  priests  of  the  Church  of  Rome  into  a  semi-pagan 
Christianity. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Achaean  League,  48. 

Alexander:  disseminates  Hellenism, 

32;    successors  of,   accustomed  to 

rule,  35;    used  small  armies,  39. 
Alexandria:      population     of,     67; 

world's  debt  to,   68;    literature  of, 

60",     museum    and    library   of,    71; 

no  record  of  literary  and  social  life 

at ,  88. 
Alexandrian:  work  of,  scholars,  109. 
Antioch:   importance  of,  95. 
Apollonius:  influence  of,  113. 
Architecture:   Hellenistic,  117. 
Art:    fusion  of  different  schools  of, 

possible,  75;    Greek,  in  Egypt,  87; 

influence  of  Hellenism  upon,  115. 
Artillery:  developed  by  Alexander, 

38. 
Athens  :  remained  the  home  of  Greek 

philosophy,  87. 

Banking,  120. 

Barbarians:  change  of  Greek  atti- 
tude toward,  14. 

Blble  (see  under  New  Testament). 

Business:  advance  in  methods  of, 
120. 

Cavalry:   use  of,  by  Alexander,  37. 

Celts:   invasion  of,  42. 

Christianity:  influences  of  Hellen- 
ism on,  127;  relation  of  Stoicism  to, 
142. 

Culture:  high  standard  of,  reached 
by  average  people,  137. 

Cyropadia:  praise  of  Persian  ideals,  7. 

Cyrus:  the  later  ideal  of  Xenophon, 


Democracy:  attitude  of  Xenophon 
toward,  16  ff.;  Greek,  checked  by 
Macedonian  garrisons,  47. 

Dialect:  writers  of — Sappho,  Theoc- 
ritus, Herodotus,  8. 


Economy,  On  Household:  picture  of 
Attic  life,  8. 

Egypt:  mercenaries  from,  12;  Rela- 
tion of,  to  Hellenism,  Lecture  III, 
65;  easily  defended,  66;  civilisation 
of,  neglected  by  Greece,  74;  DO) 
Hellenized,  75,  84;  influence  of 
priests  in,  76;  foreign  policy  of.  78; 
tenacious  of  nationality,  85;  influ- 
ence of,  on  Greek  religion,  147. 


Flowers:  appreciation  of,  10. 

Greece:  position  of,  in  the  empire, 
46;  flattered  by  Rome,  51;  treed 
by  Rome,  52;  dissatisfied  with 
Roman  rule,  54;  conquered  by 
Rome,  57;  relation  of,  to  Egypt 
under  the  Ptolemies,  86. 

Greek:  the  chief  bond  of  Alexander's 
empire,  40;  used  by  Christ,  130; 
language  of  Christianity,  133; 
knowledge  of,  implied  culture,  136. 

Hellenedom:  corresponds  to  Hel- 
lenic, 3. 

Hellenic:  literature,  how  preserved, 
100;  diffusion  of,  literature,  in. 

Hellenicism,  4. 

Hellenism:  corresponds  to  "Hel- 
'.enic"  in  Grote,  to  "Hellenistic" 
in  Uroysen,  3;  to  both  in  Bevan'a 
House  0/  Seleucus,  4;  the  "silver 
age"  of  Greek  art  and  literature.  4; 
beginnings  of,  5;  General  Reflec- 
tions on,  Lecture  V,  109;  achieve 
ments  of,  in  science,  118;  brings 
advance  in  refinements  of  life,  118; 
preference  for  city  life  character- 
istic of,  122;  Influence  of,  on  Chris- 
tianity, Lecture  VI,  127. 

Hellenistic:  adjective  from  Hellen- 
ism, 4;  literature  of,  period,  11-'; 
architecture,  117. 

Herod  the  Great:  a  Hellenizer,  129. 

Homer:  Hellenistic  criticism  of,  109. 


153 


INDEX 


154 


Isocrates:  on  Attic  culture,  6;  ad- 
vocates conquest  of  Persia,  15; 
hails  Philip  as  leader  of  the  Greeks, 
31- 

Jews:  development  of,  102;  progress 
of  Hellenism  among,  ceases,  104. 

Library:   work  of  Alexandrian,  109. 

Macedonia:  and  Greece,  Lecture  II, 
31;  not  a  unit,  34;  governed  by 
feudal  lords,  35;  retains  its  identity 
in  the  empire,  41;  character  of  kings 
of,  42;  barrier  against  barbarian 
invasion  of  Greece,  45;  divided  into 
four  republics  by  Rome,  58;  dis- 
appearance of,  as  a  nation,  59; 
made  a  Roman  province,  59. 

Mercenaries:  Greek,  5;  Egyptian, 
12;  women  captives  of  Greek,  14; 
Greek,  characteristics  of ,  17;  Greek, 
in  Egypt,  73,  86. 

Monarchy:   spread  of,  22. 

Music:  Greek,  115. 

Mysteries:  of  Eleusis,  147. 

New  Testament:   exhibits  influence 

of  Hellenism,  114. 
Novel:   origin  of  the  modern,  70. 

Palestine:  progress  of  Hellenism  in, 

128. 
Parthians:  origin  of,  99. 
Paul:   used  Greek,  41;   imbued  with 

Greek   culture,    131;    influence   of 

Stoicism  on,  141. 
Pergamum:   history  of,  100. 
Persia:     conquest    of,    planned    by 

Agesilaus,  advocated  by  Isocrates, 

IS- 
Phalanx:   purpose  and  character  of, 

36;    not  favored  by  Alexander,  37. 
Philip:  organizer  of  the  phalanx,  36. 


Politics:  change  of  ideals  in,  120. 
Polity:    0}  the  Athenians  represents 

Xenophon's   opinion,    16;     On  the 

Lacedeemonian,  19. 
Polybius:    favors   union   of   Greece 

and  Rome,  56. 
Ptolemies:  rule  of  the,  72;  the  later, 

become  thoroughly  Egyptian,  82. 

Race  fusion:  slow,  14. 

Romans:  unnoticed  by  the  Greeks,  12. 

Rome:  flatters  Greece,  51;  interferes 
in  Greece,  51;  relation  of,  to  Egypt, 
83. 

Scholars  :  work  of  Alexandrian,  109. 

Science:  in  Hellenistic  period,  118; 
mathematical,  118. 

Sculpture:  so-called  "silver  age"  of 
Greek    116. 

Septuagint:  importance  of,  80. 

Socrates:  attitude  of,  toward  patri- 
otism, 6. 

Sparta:   unfitted  to  rule  Greece,  19. 

St.  John:  influence  of  Greek  philoso- 
phy on,  140. 

Stoicism:  influence  of,  on  Christi- 
anity, 142. 

Syria:  great  rival  of  Egypt,  79;  con- 
quered by  Ptolemy,  80;  and  Hellen- 
ism, Lecture  IV,  93;  character  and 
extent  of,  94. 

Tyrants:  pourtrayed  in  the  Hiero  of 
Xenophon,  24;  character  of,  49; 
in  Greek  cities  encouraged  by  Mace- 
donian policy,  50. 

Xenophon:  the  Precursor  of  Hellen- 
ism, Lecture  I,  3;  On  Household 
Economy,  8;  attitude  toward  hunt- 
ing, 9;  travels  of,  n;  Polity  of  the 
Athenians,  16;  on  Greek  tyrants, 
24;  on  monarchy  26. 


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